The Low-FODMAP Diet for Teens

Your gut health is integral to overall health. 

Unfortunately, many adults have lost the core concepts of how to be nutritionally sound, and they're also unable to teach their children healthy eating habits.

Because of lapses in nutrition and other evolving factors surrounding certain foods (i.e. wheat), the instances of IBS, Crohn's disease and other digestive distress have risen in the child and teen populations.

Rachel Meltzer Warren, MS, RD, believes that's why it's important to give teens the proper foundation now, so they can switch this trend for the future.

Rachel's new book, A Teen's Guide to Gut Health, utilizes the Low-FODMAP diet, which isn't really a "diet" in the traditional sense (nor a fad). Rather, this diet is an elimination and reintroduction plan of certain foods containing short-chain carbohydrates which many individuals find hard to digest.

The low-FODMAP diet is not meant to be a lifetime plan; instead, it's a way to identify which foods are causing digestive issues.

How does it work?

For 2-6 weeks, cut back on all of the classes of foods that contain these short-chain carbohydrates. Then, one by one, reintroduce classes to test out how your body tolerates them. Some individuals can tolerate one class but not another; sometimes it depends on the amount.

Essentially, low-FODMAP is a tool for finding out what your body tolerance is and discovering which classes of carbs are problematic. 

The tricky part is that the foods are not overly obvious. A new app has a frequently updated database of foods, which include onions, garlic, apples, avocados, beans, and wheat. During the 2-6 week test period, find some go-to meals without those staples that you can rotate through.

Once you've identified the foods that bother you, you can continue with the diet in a modified fashion; learning to live with what you've discovered along the way.

Listen in as Rachel joins hosts Andrea and Lisa to discuss the low-FODMAP diet, as well as why legitimizing kids' and teens' digestive health problems is so important, especially in the school environment.