Crohn's & Colitis Diet Guide: Includes 150 Recipes

by A. Hillary Steinhart, Julie Cepo

Dietary strategies and delicious recipes that help manage inflammatory bowel disease. Good nutrition is a top priority for people living with Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis and also for their families and friends. There is often a fear of trying new foods, as well as other concerns. Is a current diet appropriate? Can the usual foods purchased at the grocery store still be part of the daily diet? Crohn's and Colitis Diet Guide addresses these concerns and more. The authors explain how nutrition plays a central role in the management of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and discuss the importance of maintaining general health during times of disease activity and periods of remission. They also show how a person's nutritional status affects immunity, wound-healing and other physiological processes. Reliable, well-researched dietary advice combined with 150 outstanding recipes provides a crucial resource for those managing IBD. Although good nutrition does not cure IBD, and although -- with certain exceptions -- nutritional therapy does not always control disease flares, good nutrition is important for health maintenance, symptom management and well-being.

Genres: Cookbooks, Health, Nonfiction, Food, Cooking, Reference

288 pages, Paperback

First published April 11, 2008

Reviews

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A new edition would be more than warranted, as this one is already over 5 years old. I think it might be tailored slightly towards people with severe IBD who’ve had surgeries. However, there’s a lot of good general diet advice and strategies to maintain an interesting diet with various possible restrictions, and information on IBD care in general. Several recipes sound pretty tasty, and I look forward to trying them. There is extra information with each recipe to help readers adapt it for their own needs, such as lactose intolerance, lowering the fiber, increasing certain nutrients, or making it vegetarian. This could be quite useful for someone with IBD who still wants to cook, or who wants dishes comfortable to eat that the rest of the household will also enjoy, and to prevent food boredom.

[Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

While struggling with a colitis flare I have looked at a lot of books and a lot of online information. Sadly most of what I can find is totally contradictory from one to the next. I think like digestive diseases, diet for managing and treating it is highly individual. Since I have long had a diagnosis, I was mostly looking for nutritional help with managing the flare and am now at the point of adding foods back.

This book has been the most helpful and practical that I have found. For me it provided just the information and assistance that I couldn't find anywhere else. Charts that provide alternative sources of essential nutrients such as calcium and potassium are clear and helpful. Explanations of various diets like low fiber, high calorie, lactose free, soluble fiber choice were quite clear and helpful

The recipes in particular were really well done. Alongside the recipes were clear tags for the particular diets and suggestions for how to adapt the basic recipe to specific requirements such as low fiber. This gave me someplace to begin and suggestions that really worked in daily life. I've gotten little to no help from my gastroenterologist on nutrition and diet during this flare and this book truly was a life-saver.

[Mskychick · Rating 4 out of 5]

ILL interlibrary loan via NC Cardinal

This is a great book! Lots of good medical info and nutrition info.

Quite a number of these recipes have a low fiber options listed at the bottom. I am trying to find an entire cookbook of Low Residue diet recipes, and this is not it. I feel like, even making the low fiber tweaks that these recipes suggest, there are still way too many ingredients which are in the NO List for low residue eating. *sigh*

[Casey · Rating 5 out of 5]

There was a lot of great information on Crohn’s disease for me in this book. Went over everything from diagnosis to treatments and diet plans. Went over specifics on surgeries also, if they were needed. I would recommend this book for the info it contains is extremely helpful for people knowing their disease and how to manage it.

[Mia · Rating 1 out of 5]

I just didn't find this book helpful AT ALL! Seriously, the recipes were not only labor intensive but, IMHO, ridiculously broad.

[Kevin Morey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just a repeat of her companion book on the subject with lots of healthy recipes that I felt were more general and not specifically focused on Crohn's

[Shaya · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very good book for those of us who have been recently diagnosed with IBD and are feeling as if we are going to starve to death. It not only covers nutrition extensively, but gives most of the important information about treatment, surgery, the science of it all, etc. I can only really think of two things to nitpick: while it does mention probiotics, it doesn’t mention VSL3 which is basically THE probiotic for Ulcerative Colitis. It also focuses on the long term effects of Prednisone, while leaving out all of the horrible side effects that can happen from the other medications/injections. But, overall, FULL of helpful information and recipes.

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love almost all of the recipes. As a new member of the world of IBD, this definitely helped. Most of the recipes are simple, and easy to follow. They taste great, but most importantly, they leave you feeling well after eating.

Note- to anyone with lactose intolerance, use lactose free milk to replace any dairy products. It worked well for me, and the recipes still turned out great.

[Jessica Collins · Rating 1 out of 5]

There is some spectacularly bad diet advice in this book. This condition is hard enough to deal with without medical professionals telling patients that diet has little to no effect on healing. That is a total lie, and sets patients up for long term issues! Diet and lifestyle matter MOST when it comes to IBD.

[Sam · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was helpful dietarily speaking. It just provided general stuff that I need to know about what I intake.

[Steve Clark]

Robert Rose Inc (2008)