What are the worst foods for IBS?

What are the worst foods for IBS?

I think the first thing I need to highlight is I really want to get out of this space of good foods, bad foods, junk foods, super foods. And let's just look at food as food, for starters, looking at food and not demonising foods, because the last thing we need in the west is a poor relationship with food and our bodies.

So when we look at IBS, for instance, some people are more sensitive to certain foods than others. For instance, when we look at the FODMAP diet, high FODMAP foods include onions, garlic, broccoli. And for myself, I had IBS for many, many years, from the age of 14 to almost up to my late 20s. And now I'm almost eight years free of IBS. But I never had issues with onion or garlic or broccoli. So should I have removed those foods from my diet? No.

So it's all going to be case by case. What we do know is one of the best ways of feeding the microbiome. These friendly bacterias is by adding more fibres into the diet. So when we look at certain food groups that don't contain fibre, we're looking at dairy. We're looking at animal products, milk, cream, cheese, eggs, etc. These foods don't contain fibre. These foods aren't feeding the good, healthy bacteria, and in some cases, they can, in fact, feed the bad bacteria.

The good thing to remember is when we have this perfect balance of good and bad, we're okay. But when we start to see these imbalances, that's when we start to see those symptoms.