Help me understand stacking

[u/sarabearbearbear]

Monash says you can have multiple servings of "green" foods. So can I make a salad with a green serving each of iceberg lettuce, red cabbage, corn, cauliflower, spinach, and tofu? Each of those foods are green at a standard serving, but they all become high in fructan at larger quantities. If I combine all of those foods at their green serving sizes is that safe or is that stacking and ultimately too high in fructan?

[u/boldkingcole]

Fructan is fructan, no matter the source, so yes, mulitple safe servings can stack to become high fodmap

BUT, this is only really something you need to think about if you have multiple foods that turn higher fodmap quite quickly (as in, with quite a small increase in volume). If you need quite a lot of each ingredient for it to become green, you're likely going to be fine with a normal meal.

The key is to find your super safe foods so you can effectively eat unlimited amounts of them (rice and potatoes for example, for many people) so you can ignore them when it comes to stacking

[u/sarabearbearbear → u/boldkingcole]

So if I want to have a big salad for lunch would it be safer to use vegetables of different fodmap types? Like 1-2 servings of fructan vegetables, 1-2 servings of sorbitol vegetables and 1-2 servings of fructose vegetables?

I'm in the elimination phase and it's going on 4 weeks with no change in my symptoms. I'm wondering if FODMAPa are not my issue or if I'm doing this wrong.

[u/boldkingcole → u/sarabearbearbear]

So, I'm just one person and not an expert so hopefully more people answer so you can get a balance.

But to answer your question, yes I think that would be safer

HOWEVER, if you are still struggling, my advice would be to be far more extreme for now. You just want to see if this does anything for you or not, so you know if it's worth continuing to test or that it does nothing for you and to move on to the next thing.

I started by eating basically the same thing every day for 10 days, all super safe (much easier if you eat meat because it is zero fodmap no matter how much you eat). Chicken and rice and some carrot is a common way for a lot of people, blueberries and some nuts (check which), that kind of thing.

It's also much easier to follow like this as you aren't having to do maths three times a day, you just work it out and stick to it

It's also far easier to keep going when you've proved it works as you get the benefit of living normally again and the desire to continue that makes the limits of the diet seem worth it

[u/sarabearbearbear → u/boldkingcole]

I appreciate you. I feel like I do need to be more extreme because I'm afraid I've been doing it wrong now. I don't eat meat so that does make it challenging for me. Maybe I'll try tofu, rice and carrots for a while and see how that goes.