40 Fun Facts About FODMAP

Which sugar-free gum sweetener, restricted on a low-FODMAP diet, is also dangerously poisonous to dogs?

Xylitol makes a dog's body release a flood of insulin, which can crash its blood sugar to life-threatening levels within the hour.

Researchers at which institution created the low-FODMAP diet and still lab-test foods for a traffic-light phone app?

Monash University's team reports that IBS symptoms ease in three out of four people who try the diet, and it now certifies packaged foods as low-FODMAP.

In the diet acronym FODMAP, which describes poorly absorbed short-chain sugars, what word does the letter F stand for?

Fermentable means gut bacteria can feed on these sugars, and the gas they give off is what stretches a sensitive bowel.

Garlic's fructans dissolve in water, so which liquid can be infused with garlic flavor and still stay low-FODMAP?

Cooking oil takes up garlic's flavor but not its fructans, which only move into watery liquids such as a soup or sauce.

Wheat bread is limited on a low-FODMAP diet because of its fructans, not because of which well-known wheat protein?

Gluten is a protein while FODMAPs are sugars, which is why a gluten-free loaf can still be high-FODMAP if onion, pear or honey has been added.

Which anti-gas pill, whose inventor won the first Ig Nobel Prize in Medicine, uses an enzyme to digest legume sugars?

Beano contains alpha-galactosidase, an enzyme taken from a fungus that breaks down the chain sugars in beans before gut bacteria can get to them.

Which cheese is low-FODMAP because long aging leaves it with almost none of the natural sugar found in milk?

Cheddar keeps less than 1.5% of milk's sugar: most drains off with the whey, and bacteria turn the rest into lactic acid as the cheese ripens.

Which style of bread, traditionally left to prove for over 12 hours, can be low-FODMAP?

Sourdough's long rise gives the microbes time to eat the fructans in the flour, though loaves made from wheat or rye flour can still test high.

Honey is high-FODMAP because it contains more of which simple sugar than glucose?

Fructose is absorbed only about 25 to 50 grams at a sitting even by a healthy gut, and whatever is left over travels on to feed gut bacteria.

Which sugar alcohol, a FODMAP found naturally in prunes, is thought to give prunes their laxative effect?

Sorbitol pulls water into the bowel, which is why pharmacies also sell it on its own as an over-the-counter laxative.

In the acronym FODMAP, the letter P stands for which group, found in stone fruit and sugar-free chewing gum?

Polyols are sugar alcohols, and on an ingredient list most of them give themselves away with a name ending in -ol.

The D in FODMAP stands for disaccharides, which in practice means which sugar found in milk and ice cream?

Lactose has to be split by the enzyme lactase before it can be absorbed, and most adults worldwide make less of that enzyme after early childhood.

Doctors rule out which autoimmune condition before a low-FODMAP diet, since cutting wheat can hide its symptoms?

Celiac disease can be masked when symptoms ease on the diet, which delays a diagnosis and leaves the real cause untreated.

FODMAPs slip through the small intestine unabsorbed; in which organ do gut bacteria then turn them into gas?

The colon is where bacteria use FODMAPs as fuel, and this happens in everyone: people with IBS simply feel the stretch more.

By which process do unabsorbed FODMAPs, being small molecules, drag extra water into the bowel?

Osmosis pulls water toward the concentrated sugars, and that extra fluid together with gas is the double action that distends the gut.

Breath tests for poorly absorbed sugars measure which gas, which human cells never make but gut bacteria do?

Hydrogen in the breath can only have come from bacteria feeding on sugar, though roughly a third of people give off methane instead.

Because gut bacteria feed on them, many FODMAPs belong to which class of ingredient often added to yogurts?

Prebiotics are food for microbes already living in the gut, which is why a strict low-FODMAP diet kept up for too long may thin out beneficial species.

FODMAPs are all short-chain members of which major nutrient family?

Carbohydrates are all but absent from plain meat, fish and eggs, which is why those foods are naturally low in FODMAPs.

Which pungent Indian spice, sold as a powder, is used on a low-FODMAP diet to stand in for onion?

Asafoetida is the dried sap of a carrot-family plant, harsh-smelling when raw, that gives off an onion-like aroma once it is fried.

Which part of a scallion or leek can stay on the plate, because the plant's fructans are packed elsewhere?

The green tops are low in fructans, so they are used, along with chives, to bring back the onion flavor the diet takes away.

Which root, also roasted and ground as a coffee substitute, supplies the inulin added to many high-fiber foods?

Chicory root is so rich in the fructan inulin that fiber bars and yogurts boosted with it can be a hidden trigger on a low-FODMAP diet.

Which North American tuber is so rich in inulin that a 17th-century English botanist condemned it for causing wind?

Sunchoke, also called Jerusalem artichoke, stores its energy as inulin instead of starch, and human digestive enzymes can't break inulin down.

Which staple grain, a low-FODMAP swap for wheat, comes from a grass that is unable to make fructans?

Rice is the notable exception among grasses, many of which store fructans in their stems as protection against freezing.

Which popular pizza and stir-fry ingredient is high-FODMAP because it is naturally rich in sugar alcohols?

Mushrooms are among the foods richest in natural sugar alcohols, alongside stone fruits such as cherries, peaches and plums.

Which vegetable, popular as a low-carb stand-in for pizza crust and mash, is on the high-FODMAP list?

Cauliflower owes its place on the list to sugar alcohols, the same FODMAP group found in snow peas and stone fruit.

Lentils and chickpeas are lower in FODMAPs when bought in which form, as their sugars leach into liquid that is drained?

Canned legumes sit in brine long enough for their water-soluble chain sugars to seep out, so the advice is to discard the brine and rinse them before use.

Which style of tofu is high in FODMAPs, unlike the firm kind, because its curds are never pressed?

Silken tofu is unpressed, so it keeps the liquid it sets in, and the FODMAPs in soybeans are the kind that dissolve in water.

Which lunchbox fruit, restricted in the first phase of a low-FODMAP diet, carries two FODMAP types at once?

Apple packs both excess fruit sugar and a sugar alcohol, and its juice is on the high-FODMAP list too.

Which picnic fruit, a botanical relative of the cucumber, is on the high-FODMAP list?

Watermelon has more than twice as much fruit sugar as glucose and contains sugar alcohols too, so a slice delivers more than one FODMAP.

Which nut, toxic when raw until it is roasted or steamed, joins pistachios on the high-FODMAP list?

Cashews and pistachios are the nuts named on the high-FODMAP list, while peanuts, walnuts and macadamias all sit on the low side.

Which pancake topping stays low-FODMAP in normal servings because its main sugar is sucrose?

Maple syrup is mostly sucrose, an even pairing of glucose and fruit sugar that the small intestine breaks down and absorbs efficiently.

After a strict first phase and a round of food challenges, the low-FODMAP diet ends in a long-term stage called what?

Personalization means restricting only the foods that failed their challenge, and retesting those over time because tolerance can change.

What term describes several individually safe low-FODMAP servings adding up in one meal to trigger IBS symptoms?

Stacking only applies within a single sitting, so leaving two to three hours between meals and snacks gives the gut time to deal with each load.

In the IBS subtype labels IBS-C and IBS-D, D means diarrhea; which symptom does the letter C stand for?

Constipation-predominant IBS is one of the main subtypes, alongside the diarrhea type and a mixed pattern labelled IBS-M.

The O in FODMAP is for oligosaccharides, whose Greek prefix oligo-, as in oligarchy, carries what meaning?

Few is the literal sense: an oligosaccharide is a short chain of roughly three to ten simple sugars linked together.

Which almost calorie-free sugar alcohol is mostly absorbed into the blood and passed in urine, bypassing gut bacteria?

Erythritol leaves the body 80 to 90 percent unchanged in urine within a day, so far less of it is left for bacteria than with other sugar alcohols.

The first milk with all its natural sugar removed was launched in 2001 by Valio, a dairy based in which country?

Finland's Valio patented a way to separate the sugar out, so the milk keeps the fresh taste of ordinary milk instead of the sweetness that enzyme-treated milk has.

Which ancient wheat species, also called dinkel, is naturally lower in fructans than modern bread wheat?

Spelt on its own is not enough: pasta and flakes made from it still test higher in fructans than its slow-risen bread.

The ability to keep digesting milk sugar in adulthood is most common among which of these populations?

Northern Europeans mostly keep making the milk-sugar enzyme as adults, a trait that evolved after people took up dairying; worldwide, most adults lose it.

The enzyme added to make low-FODMAP milk splits milk sugar into glucose and which other simple sugar?

Galactose and glucose both taste sweeter than the sugar they came from, which is why enzyme-treated milk tastes sweeter with nothing added.