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Cooking For People with Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Summary & Participants

The kitchen is where problems sometimes start and where solutions are often found for people with Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). For the latest on food, nutrition and IBD, join host Bettina Gregory and two guests who share nutrition tips and special recipes for people with Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis.

Medically Reviewed On: July 01, 2008

Webcast Transcript

BETTINA GREGORY: Hello. I'm Bettina Gregory. Choosing the right diet is a daily problem for as many as a million Americans with Crohn's Disease or Ulcerative Colitis. There's no evidence that any particular foods cause or contribute to these inflammatory bowel diseases. But for any individual, the wrong foods can promote flair-ups, or make symptoms worse. And the right foods can help promote healing.

The Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America recently hosted a program on Nutrition and Inflammatory Bowel Disease. Nutritionist Leslie Bonci spoke with us about dietary guidelines. And joining us was Ricky Safer, who has a son with ulcerative colitis. Ricky and Leslie have been working with the Foundation on a collection of recipes for patients with I-B-D.

RICKY SAFER: We have our ingredients already in the blender. We have ice cubes and some low-fat milk and a little bit of honey, and then all we're going to do is add the bananas.

BETTINA GREGORY: This is a banana drink?

RICKY SAFER: This is a banana smoothie. And we go over to the blender. Okay. So that took all of about maybe a minute. And then all we have to do before is just pour it into the glass, and we're ready to serve it. One of the wonderful things is the easy preparation, because when you're not feeling well, if you can have something nutritious and make it in a minute or so -- well, another 30 seconds to cut up the bananas -- we're all set.

So this is also great. Either you can have it for breakfast, you can have it as a snack. You can have it with dinner. And one of the things we're trying to do with all the recipes is have lots of substitutions in them. So, for example, for this one you can use a low-fat milk, some of the milk substitutes that Leslie talked about. If you're lactose intolerant, you can substitute some fruit juices, apple juice, orange juice. And if you don't like bananas or you can't tolerate bananas, you could have peaches, mangos. If you can stand fruits with seeds, you can do raspberries, strawberries.

BETTINA GREGORY: Ah, good. This is lovely.

RICKY SAFER: Anything. My son likes to use frozen fruits because he doesn't even have to cut up the food. He just goes to the freezer, takes it out, throws it in.

BETTINA GREGORY: Save on ice.

RICKY SAFER: It saves on ice. That's an important thing. And if you use frozen fruits, you use fewer ice cubes. And then another suggestion we've had from people is to put peanut butter in.

BETTINA GREGORY: Really?

RICKY SAFER: Yeah. Quite a few substitutions.

BETTINA GREGORY: Leslie, we have an e-mail question about vegetables. Tom from Virginia says he's been on a low-fiber diet for more than ten years, and that he simply cannot handle uncooked vegetables. But he says he really doesn't like what he calls the cooked, soft, mushy stuff, either. What can you tell us about fruits and vegetables for someone like Tom?

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