Tag: LOW FODMAP

Ramen Eggs – low fodmap

These mini ramen eggs are great for a party as a snack food, they have a strong umami flavour and taste great! The eggs were free range, which is obviously really important to ensure the quail that laid them are able to forage and live as far as possible as they would in the wild. They are also just the right size to add to a Bento lunch box salad and are used in Japanese cuisine. I bought mine at a farmers market a few days ago. They are very simple to make and can also be made using hens eggs if you prefer to do that. Tamari is made without wheat and is therefore gluten free if you are also have coeliac disease, but do check the label before you purchase just in case.

Ingredients

  • 12 Quail eggs
  • 200ml Mirin (japanese sweet wine wine)
  • 100ml Tamari dark soy sauce
  • 2 star anise
  • Black and white sesame seeds – you only need a small amount to decorate the eggs when finished

Method

  • Add the mirin, soy sauce and star anise to a pan and heat till boiling and cook for five minutes to impart the star anise flavour.
  • Allow the marinade to cool
  • Add the quail eggs to a pan and warm to boil and cook for 2 minutes.
  • Add the eggs to a pan of cold water to stop the cooking.
  • Tap the base (the more rounded end) on a surface and peel the egg under a tap – take care as you should avoid damaging the egg surface if you can as this will be more obvious after the eggs are marinaded.
  • Marinade the eggs for 24 hours in the refrigerator.
  • Cut each egg in half and sprinkle with sesame seeds.
  • The marinade can be used again and makes an ideal marinade for salmon or tuna too!

Serves 3-4 as a party hors d’oeuvre to serve with drinks.

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Ratatouille – lowfodmap.

Ratatouille is a really healthy dish and the best way to make it is to roast each of the vegetables separately. This might appear to be a bit of a faff, but it does ensure that you can taste all the individual flavours in the dish. It is a dish for those days where you feel like pottering about in the kitchen and have time to prepare a meal. I find cooking relaxing and I enjoy it – but it is also worth mentioning that some people don’t enjoy it at all and find meal preparation a chore, there is tinned ratatouille available but most will contain onion which is a fructan’s, so if you can tolerate fructan’s by all means have the tinned variety instead. (I don’t have an issue with tinned vegetables – they are perfectly acceptable and contain good sources of nutrition.)

The above infographic from Compound Interest https://www.compoundchem.com/ shows the colours of peppers and how this develops with ripening. Yellow and red peppers are the sweetest so are best for this recipe. Note that I have not removed any of the skins from the roasted pepper – this is what I would call a faff and why would you want to remove a source of fibre from the dish? The Mediterranean diet is good for health and this classic French provencale dish is a Mediterranean stew that ticks all the boxes.

Ingredients

  • 1 courgette
  • 1 aubergine
  • 2 packs of mini sweet peppers or 300g yellow or red bell peppers
  • 1 tin tomatoes
  • 1/4 teaspoon of asafoetida
  • 3 tablespoons oil
  • 1 tablespoon dried oregano
  • a few springs of fresh thyme (or a tablespoon on dried)
  • 1 teaspoon of sugar
  • Salt

Method

  • Wash the vegetables and chop
  • Add each vegetable to it’s own tray, drizzle with olive oil, thyme sprigs and season with salt.
  • Add the trays to the oven and roast until soft on gas mark 6/200 degrees C. Watch carefully to avoid burning.
  • Whilst the vegetables are roasting add a tablespoon of oil to a pan and fry the asafotida for a few seconds to release the onion flavour then add the tin of plum tomatoes and mash them. Add the teaspoon of sugar to reduce the acidity of the dish and then add the oregano. Reduce the tomatoes by boiling to a half in volume.
  • Combine all the ingredients and serve.
  • Serves 4 and tastes lovely with fish!

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Lemon Curd – Low FODMAP.

I love the sharpness and sweetness of lemon curd and the vibrant yellow colour is just perfect for Easter. It is also a great gift to give to those relatives you haven’t seen for some time! It does contain fats and sugar but you will generally only be using a small amount on toast or crackers so it’s likely to be fine to use and absolutely fine for an Easter treat!

Ingredients

  • 6 unwaxed lemons
  • 300g caster sugar
  • 150g butter
  • 6 medium sized eggs

Method

  • Wash and grate the skin from the lemons, cut in half and squeeze the juice into a bowl
  • Add the caster sugar, lemon juice, butter and rind into a glass bowl and put the bowl over a pan on boiling water and mix until the butter is dissolved.
  • Crack open the eggs into a separate bowl and beat with a fork.
  • Add the egg mixture to the other ingredients over the boiling water pan slowly and mix till incorporated.
  • Add the mix to a fresh pan and heat directly whilst stirring till the mixture thickens.
  • Add to jars sterilized with hot water.
  • This should keep for around two weeks

Makes about 700g depending on the size of the eggs

Easy!

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Two kiwi fruit a day keeps constipation away?

You have heard about prunes haven’t you? I even have a post about prunes here https://clinicalalimentary.blog/2015/09/13/prunes-natures-laxative/ and how they have been used to help with constipation due to their sorbitol content. Sorbitol is a polyol, a sugar that is not absorbed into the body and helps to keep fluid inside the bowel, helping with constipation, but it’s drawback is that it’s a FODMAP. So what if there was a fruit that acted in a similar way to prunes but was low FODMAP? How fantastic that would be – well, kiwi fruit might well be that option.

Some people with IBS with constipation do reduce the fibre that they consume because they have noticed that ‘fruit and vegetables’ can make symptoms worse. The challenge is that there is little data to suggest that the low FODMAP diet resolves constipation in IBS-C, but we should also recognise quality of life and pain and the importance of resolving these outcomes and if pain is reduced but constipation is not then this might be considered an improvement by the person following the diet. We clearly need more research in IBS-C for more treatments to be available in all areas. If the Low Fodmap diet is to be used in IBS-C, in this situation I would always consider patient wishes whilst stating that we know less about IBS-C, and state that the diet must be done for the least amount of time (3 weeks) and if symptoms get worse or do not improve they must stop the diet. Focus needs to be on increasing levels of fibre from foods that are well tolerated in those with IBS and constipation. This is why a dietitian who is knowledgeable about the GI tract can be really beneficial to see to get the balance right. Kiwi fruit would appear to be part of that solution.

For people with constipation in China a study did look at the effects on constipation and found that improvements were seen in transit time (shortened) although this was not a double blind study (the best kind of research study.) For IBS, another study4 gave reductions in transit time but again this was not blinded, which might be a problem, but how do you blind a kiwi fruit? This is always a difficult challenge in nutrition. The other problem is the high placebo effects for IBS studies and the decrease in transit time of approximately 20% could possibly be down to a placebo effect. So the science does need to be repeated with better quality studies. The mechanism of why kiwi reduced transit time has been studied5 in healthy adults by completing an MRI scan of the bowel and it was found that water content in the bowel was significantly increased and they also suspected that the kiwi showed some action in increasing movement of the bowel (prokinectic action). But we do know that kiwi is low fodmap therefore is less likely to provoke symptoms in people with IBS and there are other potential benefits such as increasing the fibre content of the diet is good for health – so why not give it a try?

Kiwi fruit has 3.0g fibre per 100g so that doesn’t seem a huge amount, for two 6.01g. Alternatively prunes have 3.1g per 100g so these figures are very similar. Does the type of fibre matter? It does for people with IBS and if people do respond to a low FODMAP diet then clearly if they have identified polyols as a problem kiwi fruit is an excellent alternative fruit to try to help increase fibre content of the diet. There is also another means of increasing the fibre content and that is to include the skin when you eat one. Yes, you have read this correctly – eat the skin! You might not be relishing that prospect but I do encourage you to give it a try. Wash the kiwi fruit, then trim off the ends and slice it into segments to eat. This is a better means if you are disinclined to give it a try by just eating it whole. Eating the skin will add an additional 1.5g2 per 100g therefore a total of 9.0g for two, just under of a third of the daily adult requirements per day!

Are there any people who perhaps should avoid kiwi? Perhaps if people have not tried it before and have been diagnosed with a latex allergy it is possible that kiwi fruit might provoke a reaction as they contain protein that has a very similar structure to latex and the bodies immune system can confuse kiwi for latex. Kiwi can also induce oral symptoms in those with oral allergy syndrome or pollen food syndrome for some people – again due to the protein in kiwi confusing the immune system. But if someone has no symptoms then they can include it in the diet.

  1. http://www.nutridata.self.com accessed 27.03.21

2. David P. Richardson · Juliet Ansell · Lynley N. Drummond (2018) The nutritional and health attributes of kiwifruit: a review European Journal of Nutrition (2018) 57:2659–2676

3. Annie On On Chan, Gigi Leung, Teresa Tong, Nina YH Wong (2007) Increasing dietary fiber intake in terms of kiwifruit improves
constipation in Chinese patients World J Gastroenterol 2007 September 21; 13(35): 4771-4775

4. Chang CC, Lin YT, Lu YT, Liu YS, Liu JF. Kiwifruit improves bowel function in patients with irritable bowel syndrome with constipation. Asia Pac J Clin Nutr. 2010;19(4):451-7. PMID: 21147704.

5. Wilkinson-Smith V, Dellschaft N, Ansell J, Hoad C, Marciani L, Gowland P, Spiller R. Mechanisms underlying effects of kiwifruit on intestinal function shown by MRI in healthy volunteers. Aliment Pharmacol Ther. 2019 Mar;49(6):759-768. doi: 10.1111/apt.15127. Epub 2019 Jan 31. PMID: 30706488; PMCID:

Kiwi fruit is yummy! Eat the skin too 😋

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Madeira cake low fodmap gluten free

I haven’t posted anything to my blog for a long time but this recipe is perfect for a bank holiday weekend. This is a lovely cake for a treat. Its texture improves after a couple of days in a cake tin and is just about right. It is also a great base for a trifle but it might not last log enough to make it! Try it and see if you like it.

Ingredients

150g butter

150g golden caster sugar

3 eggs

1/2 grated lemon rind

1/2 teaspoon Xanthan gum

100g gluten free self raising flour mix

Butter for the baking tin

1 500g loaf style baking tin

Method

Heat the oven to 170°C, Fan150°C, 325°F or Gas mark 3

Butter the baking tin well

Add the butter and sugar to a bowl and cream till pale colour.

Sieve the flour in a separate bowl add the xanthan gum and mix well.

Add the eggs one at a time to the butter and sugar mix and beat well after each one. If the mix appears to be curdling add a tablespoon of the flour mix

Add the grated lemon rind

Add the rest of the flour mix slowly till it’s incorporated fully.

Mix well and add to the baking tin, smooth the top and cook for one hour or until a cocktail stick pushed into the centre of the cake comes out clean.

Enjoy! If you can leave it a couple of days before you eat it, do as the texture does become more moist.

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Oatmeal and ginger crusted salmon -low fodmap

I have not posted anything on my blog for some time but hopefully I will be on here more often from now. This may surprise you considering we have all been locked in for 3 months but I have been working from home and with a new job my focus has been on that really. Anyway glad to be back. This recipe is a great summer evening meal – light and tasty just right for those long hot days.

Ingredients

  • 60g gluten free flour
  • 60g oatmeal (this does not need to be gluten free unless you have coeliac disease.)
  • 11/2 teaspoons ginger
  • Pinch of salt
  • Handful of chopped coriander
  • 1 egg
  • 4 salmon fillets
  • Spray oil

Method

  • Wash the salmon and remove the skin (you can ask the fishmonger to do this for you if you find it difficult)
  • Dust in flour.
  • Break the egg into a small dish and blend with a fork
  • Add the ginger to the oats, coriander and salt and place on a plate
  • Add the salmon to the egg wash coat and allow the excess to drain off.
  • Place the salmon fillets on the oats and coat well
  • Spray the top with spray oil
  • Cook in an oven at 204 degrees C/gas mark 6 for 15 minutes
  • Enjoy with a green salad and boiled salad potatoes

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