Irritable Bowel Syndrome Message Boards | Oatmeal Cookies = Food of Satan?

I have IBS-A. My most common symptom through the pendulum swings is occasional flatulence after meals. Through trial and error I have found that even some foods that may be "safe" for IBS, e.g., corn products like Tostitos chips, cause major flatulence problems for me.

My diet is quite dull: pasta, rice, chicken, lots of toasted sour dough rolls to begin each meal. I also greatly enjoy oatmeal with raisons and a banana for breakfast. My digestive tract seems to adore oatmeal as much as my taste buds.

Well, in early June a close friend suggested I supplement my Puritanical diet with oatmeal cookies. He brought over a bundle of them in the plastic container (they were made and sold by a local supermarket chain). They were ecstasy! Delicious!

Problem? Yes, I noticed I had a lot of flatulence after eating them. So I tried to get around my intestinal tract by eating lots of sour dough bread FIRST, then having a cookie. Sometimes this worked.

I became an oatmeal cookie fiend! I told people I could stop at just one, if I wanted, but I would find myself eating 3-4 per day, waking from an afternoon of oatmeal debauchery surrounded by the telltale cookie crumbs! One time I did this on my back porch and awoke from a hot weather doze to find a chipmonk nibbling at the crumbs around my shoe!

Seriously, I continued to have digestive warnings, and yesterday all hell broke loose. I had to pass wind every 30 seconds or so, and realized that the only dietary change I had made (I keep a food/emotion/symptom diary each day) was these addictive cookies!

So I have gone cold turkey! Today the flatulence is 95% gone. I woke up with "D", and hope that will also pass. I have eaten only sour dough rolls, chicken rice soup and gallons of water today.

Now, does it seem likely that baked goods like oatmeal cookies from a supermarket chain probably are loaded with lots of additives that irritate the intestines? I noticed corn syryp is listed, and (as noted above) I do not get along with corn products.

Am I a classic object lesson that a person with IBS cannot just blindly consume mass produced baked goods EVEN WHEN THEY ARE SUPPOSEDLY MADE OF "GOOD" (SOLUBLE FIBER) INGREDIENTS?

P.S. Perhaps the lesson is also Moderation in All Things, as those Greeks used to say. I can have a piece of carrot cake also once in a while, but I have a piece every night for a few days, my stomach gets cranky.

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