Irritable Bowel Syndrome Message Boards | Re: What's around the house.

Sugar is a staple for a lot of people following Heather's eating guidelines (the EFI Diet) because sweets help us think less about what we can't have and more about a treat to look forward to. It's certainly not necessary as long as you don't want to make desserts, cookies, and so on.

However, artificial sweeteners can be very hard on people with IBS so I'd approach Splenda very cautiously. Some people on the Boards swear by stevia. I've never tried it but you could do a Search across all Boards with no time limit and see what people have said about it. That might be an option for you - your roommate would have to ask her endocrinologist if it would be okay with her diabetes.

It sounds like you just don't cook so here are a couple of old posts that might give you some ideas for foods to eat that need little or no cooking:

No Cook 1

No Cook 2

Restaurants can be tricky until you're very clear on the EFI guidelines and know how to grill your server about what's in the food you're ordering. As for microwaves, I don't have one so I'm not sure how many recipes there are on the Boards for microwaveable stuff. You could try doing a Search on the Recipe Board with no time limit for the word microwave and see what pops up.

I'm a little confused about where you're getting this. Heather definitely lists caffeine as an irritant that is best avoided but chocolate is in a different category. Chocolate bars and a lot of store-bought and from-mix chocolate treats are high-fat and contain dairy. Since the EFI guidelines counsel keeping the percent of calories from fat down and prohibit dairy, that makes most treats like that a bad idea. However, the recipes on the Recipe Board and in Heather's cookbook mostly use cocoa powder to create relatively low-fat, dairy free chocolate foods. Some of the recipes do use chocolate chips and it is possible to find dairy-free chocolate chips. And some of the recipes are higher in fat than the EFI-prescribed 25% of calories from fat but if you consume them in small quantities after a low-fat, high SF meal, you should be okay with them. (Cocoa powder does have some caffeine but the amount is usually manageable when packaged with SF like flour in brownies, for example, or diluted with soy or rice milk in hot cocoa.)

You might find it helpful to read through the basics of Heather's EFI guidelines. The main page of the Boards has links you can follow to see the basics or you can check out this old post and follow the links in there:

The basics

HTH.