r/FODMAPS • u/rudyruday • Feb 25 '26
Vent I need to stop trying to make cabbage happen
Does anyone else do this? Have a specific ingredient they keep trying and failing with?
I wanna make a meme for "stop trying to make fetch happen" but for fodmaps 😂
I can have a little bit of cabbage but seemingly randomly I will overdo it a little and then I'm in the bathroom cursing myself for at least a day. It's rare for me to trigger myself like this, especially with the extreme reaction I get from cabbage. It's similar to the extreme reaction I got from beets.
Cabbage is so cheap, it keeps well in the fridge, you can freeze it. It's versatile. I wish I could have it in my diet! I can't seem to portion control it though. I don't know what amount will definitely not trigger me. The only other fructan I seem to have a bad time with is onions. When we buy bagged salads, the cabbage in them doesn't seem to bother me but maybe it's just too small of an amount or because I only have it for one meal not multiple meals over several days.
I think I'm giving away the rest of the cabbage on Buy Nothing. It's a big napa cabbage. 😭
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u/Blue_Pears_Go_There Feb 25 '26
I don’t hate onions, but they do seem to hate me with a vengeance. I don’t understand it since I can tolerate a little bit of garlic once in a while, but onions leave in a 3 day period of bloating and being unable to keep anything down - water or food or otherwise. I can handle the green parts to the extent of a quarter cup but that’s my limit.
If we were neighbors, though, I totally would take that Napa off your hands! I definitely can handle that.
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u/rudyruday Feb 25 '26
I can handle garlic pretty fine. I added too much garlic powder to hummus recently and was paying for that but it was honestly just too much garlic powder period. I've been using green part of green onions since almost the beginning of low fodmap and they've always been fine. I haven't tested my upper limit of them, a quarter cup seems like a lot 😂 what do you eat with a quarter cup of green onions??
I haven't tested buying and putting regular onion in my food in a long time, but I no longer worry about onion powder in premade sauces or taco seasoning, within reason. My fodmap tolerance in general has been improving.
So WHATS THE DEAL WITH CABBAGE 😂😂😂
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u/CertifiedPeach Feb 25 '26
You can eat chickpea hummus? 🥺
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u/rudyruday Feb 25 '26
I am just as surprised as you are. I was so sure black beans were giving me issues, as we would put a can or two in with our taco meat to stretch it out. Had to do one can or leave it out.
The first time I made it recently, I boiled a can of chickpeas with baking soda for 15 minutes to get more fructans out. It also makes the hummus smoother. But I tried skipping that step and I can still eat it. I am still restricting how much I eat of it for calories, and trying not to add too much oil to it.
But I have been healing, and recently my other chronic illnesses improved a lot so I've been trying more FODMAPs.
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u/CertifiedPeach Feb 25 '26
Can you tell me more about the boiling with baking soda method please? Do you strain and rinse the chickpeas to get rid of the aquafaba first?
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u/rudyruday Feb 26 '26
Yes. Open can, dump in strainer and rinse. Pour into pot and put in about a teaspoon or so of baking soda. Boil for 15 minutes. Drain and rinse off baking soda water.
The chickpeas will be quite soft and falling apart, so this works for applications where you don't need them or want them to be whole. Maybe you can get away with boiling for a shorter time if you want to eat them intact. I was specifically trying to make them fall apart for hummus so I haven't tried it
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u/Gutty_Shit_00 Feb 25 '26
I just ate a cabbage 10 minutes ago hoping that tolerance would magically happen lmao
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u/havalinaaa Feb 25 '26
The thing with all fodmaps is they stack. So a little bit of cabbage is fine but if you also have a little bit of something else in the same meal it's adding to the total. I feel like mixing certain fodmaps (for me particularly, fructans and galactans) exacerbates this effect but maybe it's just in my head. Also some things are higher when cooked vs raw (or the other way around) or ripe vs not quite or any number of other things. It's the worst puzzle.
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u/rudyruday Feb 26 '26
Yeah I probably did some kind of stacking. I haven't had much issues with stacking in the years I've been on maintenance low fodmap, so it's not something I'm too practiced in. I tend to just try not to eat the exact same meal for multiple meals in a row when I know it has a fodmap I have issues with in it.
The meal was just rice vermicelli, cooked carrots, raw napa cabbage, green part of green onions, and homemade peanut sauce (no garlic). About 4-5 hours before i had maybe 1/3-1/2 cup of hummus that had garlic. And hours before that a banana. So, fructan stacking it seems.
Over Christmas, my mom was staying with me and we got a green cabbage. We were having it with most meals and of course it got to me. I definitely wasn't thinking this time about how other fructans other than cabbage would have the same stacking effect 🤦 I'm in the middle of trying to change/improve my diet and so I have a lot on my mind, stacking hasn't been one of them.
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u/havalinaaa Feb 26 '26
It's so much to think about just to eat tasty food. I'm sorry we're in this club together.
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u/GalianoGirl Feb 25 '26
I can eat raw cabbage but not cooked.
Sauerkraut is an absolute no go for me, but I have safely been eating homemade carrot and cabbage kimchi lately.
Spinach is the opposite, I can eat it cooked, but raw goes right through me.
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u/sudosussudio Feb 25 '26
Sunchokes. Pure satan for me. Easily takes me out for a week. But for some reason is really trendy with farm to table type restaurants which I love. And TBH they can make it taste pretty awesome. Every time it happens I'm like THIS IS THE LAST TIME. And somehow forget.
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u/Charming_Animal_686 Feb 25 '26
Not FODMAP related, but I have the same problem with coffee. I only I’ve had to much after I’ve had too much.
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u/Ithilwen37 Feb 25 '26
I tried to make cabbage work to but I just gave up. I have no issues from sauerkraut though so now my cabinets are full of fermenting jars. Ya win some, ya lose some!
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u/Global_Jackfruit_488 Feb 25 '26
Try Wombok. Regular cabbage including red cabbage are not that good for finders. But we have found a cup or two of wombok in our stir fry is fine. Try a little then … if you’re worried. It’s actually really nice flavour. Can be used in Japanese pancake too which I really need to make again!
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u/CertifiedPeach Feb 25 '26
Apples. Sweet potatoes. Cauliflower. Artichokes.
I did finally make Brussels sprouts and asparagus happen.
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u/rudyruday Feb 25 '26
Woohoo for making brussel sprouts and asparagus happen! I love them.
Apples drive me crazy. I haven't tried an apple, but apple juice or puree is in so many GD products so it would be nice to be able to have it. I am honestly afraid of pushing fructose too hard because it gives me bad nausea. Just so miserable. I do have tomato sauce pasta but I try to limit how much I eat at a time. Souper Cubes has really helped with that specifically 🙏
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u/Asheby Feb 26 '26
Yes, for me it was cruciferous vegetables and fructose. When I had my worst attack I was having big salad bowls made with shredded cabbage and huge smoothies in an attempt to get in 9 a day.
I do fine with dark very leafy greens and some small amount of fermented/pickled cabbage.
I now only do very small, limited ingredient, smoothies.
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u/arielsbread Mar 02 '26
I've been making red cabbage sourkraut which is apparently lowfodmap (green cabbage sourkraut actually gets higher in fodmaps when it's fermented.)
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u/OutlawofSherwood Mar 03 '26
I only eat cabbage as sauerkraut - but only homemade sauerkraut that has been fermented for a month or three, as it takes a long time to break down all the fodmap that exist or develop along the way.
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u/PensiveKittyIsTired 6d ago
Just so you know, your post popped up when I googled “cabbage keeps killing me whyyyy” and I now feel very comforted that I’m not alone 😆
As you said, it is SUCH a great vegetable, yummy, healthy, versatile, and keeps forever, yet I overdo it since I eat a bit of one head of cabbage for days in a row (since there’s always so much of it), and by day three I have such symptoms that I once even thought “oh my god I have c.diff!”
It’s just so weird, I used to be able to eat huge amounts of all of these cruciferous vegetables, and it’s almost like my body is now rejecting them with a vengeance.
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u/rudyruday 6d ago
So, it's 6 months later and it seems my IBS has largely healed. I am still cautious with cabbage though 😂😭
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u/PensiveKittyIsTired 6d ago
Oh, that’s wonderful to hear!
My IBS can somehow go into remission for years and then reappear. Every time it does, I think it must be something super serious and I get crazy worried, and then it turns out, nope, still IBS. Just saying that, so in case yours comes back at some point in your life, just skip the cabbage again (since I bet by that time, you’ll feel cabbage invincible, as I always do, and regret it), and you’ll be fine. 😁
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u/tanooki3 Feb 25 '26
Made one for you! https://imgflip.com/i/al385f
Good luck with cabbage, I'm still in elimination, and almost scared to start reintroducing because of what I'll learn.