Food for a Fructose Malabsorber

soxbox

Late last year, after a long period of stomach problems, my girlfriend was diagnosed with Fructose Malabsorption. Basically this means there's a very vaguely defined list of things that she based on the type of sugars they contain - some things make her fairly instantly ill. Other things are tolerable occasionally / in small amounts. The list of what she can't eat includes:

- garlic
- onion
- concentrated tomato (whole fresh tomato and passata are ok)
- wheat
- mushrooms
- beans
- lentils
- most fruits (especially apples, pears and stonefruits)
- many vegetables (cauliflower, leeks, rocket)
- (other things - I'll expand on this list as required)

Look at your diet. Look at that list. Look again and wonder what the hell is left. Answer: not much, and most of that fairly bland. Meals that we can eat include:

- Steak + Potatoes
- Balsamic marinated Kangaroo + Sweet Potato
- Fish with balsamic+basil+tomato salsa.
- Shepherds Pie
- Corn Pasta
- Omelettes
- Vegetable fritters (corn + zucchuni + capsicum)
- Stir fries with rice:
- chicken + chilli + basil
- chicken + basil + lemongrass
- black pepper beef
- beef + veges in oyster sauce
- Home-made gluten free bread (gluten is actually ok, but that's the easiest way to get wheat free bread - bought gluten-free bread is horrible horrible horrible)
- Oat bread (availability of which is patchy)
- Frozen gluten-free pies (from Silly Yaks - getting our hands on these is a lot of effort).

Eating out is very very hard (everybody loves to put wheat flour, garlic and onion in everything and not mention it), but our main problem is we don't have a lot of variety in what we eat. Ideally anything we make needs to be either fast to make or leave leftovers (we're rarely home before 7pm, so cooking for 2 hours every night is a no go).

I'm in Melbourne, Australia if that influences suggestions in any way. Both my girlfriend and I are competent in the kitchen and we've got most of the necessary cookware and appliances.

Your recipes. I need them.

Improvolone

How does she handle seafood?

Asher

What a coincidence! I actually work for Silly Yak Foods. You can get our products direct from us and we do more FF stuff than just pies. We also have some FF Fruit Tarts (yes really!), Gnocchi, Hot Cross Buns and a bunch of other stuff.

Since you're in Melbourne, you shouldn't have too much trouble finding our stuff. Drop me a PM and I'll give you the address of our Factory Outlet if you want.

soxbox

Seafood is good - should've mentioned that - Natural Oysters is 'known safe' option when eating out. Getting decent seafood can be a bit of a pain in the butt, but it's doable.

JdNoa

Sounds like milk's okay?..., so you could do crustless quiche as a change from omelettes.

Tuna Quiche

4 eggs
1.5 cups milk
2 tbsp chopped parsley
1/2 tsp salt
pepper to taste
dash paprika
dash nutmeg
tin of chunk or flake tuna
1/2 cup grated cheese

Beat eggs well, add everything except paprika, pour into pie dish, sprinkle with paprika, bake 35-40 min or until set. Let stand 10 min before serving.

Also, sounds like potatoes and cheese are okay, so scalloped potatoes (skipping or replacing the flour usually used for thickening)...

Rice is okay, so maybe rice noodles as a base?

If you look up low carb pancakes there are some recipes made with almond meal instead of flour and splenda instead of sugar (or is sugar okay?). Here's one I've made that was pretty good:

1 c. almond meal
1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch salt
1 tbsp splenda
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla
2 tbsp oil
(1/2 tsp cinnamon)
milk for thinning

My notes say these aren't cohesive so work better as small pancakes.

Edit: I see zucchini is okay?

Chicken with zucchini (and originally red peppers, but I bet that's a no-go)

2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
6 boneless skinless chicken thighs
1 medium zucchini chopped in triangles
1 red pepper... if that's okay... cut in 1/4" strips
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 cup broth
3 tbsp whole milk yoghurt

Heat oil and butter in a large skillet over med heat until hot. Add chicken and cook, turning frequently, about 10 min until golden. Remove chicken and set aside.

Add zucchini, (pepper), cumin, salt and pepper to taste to skillet. Cook, stirring, about 4 min. Return chicken to skillet and add stock. Bring to boil, lower heat, simmer 10 min until chicken is cooked through.

Remove from heat, slowly stir in yoghurt, serve immediately.

Zucchini, sour cream, and cheese bake

3 tbsp butter
1 lb zucchini, trimmed and sliced 1/8 inch thick.
(I've also added or subbed spinach, if that's okay to eat)
1/2 cup grated cheese (called for Jack but I use cheddar)
1 egg
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp chopped fresh basil OR 1 tsp dried

Preheat oven to 350, butter 8"x8" baking dish.
Melt butter in large frying pan over med heat. Cook zucchini until tender.
Process the zucchini in a food processor until smooth (or smoothish).
Add all other ingredients. Put in dish, bake 30 minutes.

soxbox

We get down to Silly Yaks when we can to keep our freezer stocked as emergency food.

Are your Hot Cross Buns Fructose Friendly? With fruit in them? If so, I'm about to have a happy girlfriend, as she got very jealous when I was eating them last week.

soxbox

Oh yeah, almonds/almondmeal are out too (I feel I'll be saying that a lot as I spot things). We've had some success with using gluten free flour mixes to do pikelets.

For some reason I'd never considered crustless quiches. Good suggestion.

Elin

Make some veggie sushi?

soxbox

We haven't done sushi because the Rice Wine Vinegar we have has Fructose as an added ingredient, though I haven't looked around much to find an alternative.

Red Peppers are generally OK - shouldn't overload on them, but they're safe enough.

Shogun

Have you tried anything with spelt in it? My gran cannot eat wheat and I house-sit for her pooches frequently. She uses spelt in place of flour. It is a hexaploid species of wheat but it might work for her. While I do not know of its availability in Australia she has everything made from spelt. Bread, pasta, cereal, etc. I can't comment on its taste as I've never tried it but it might work for her.

Also she has a lot of bread made from millet flour.

As an aside question what is kangaroo meat like? I'm dying to know as I will never go to australia.

soxbox

It's a very lean gamey meat. You really need to know how to cook meat to do it right (well seared and fairly rare), but when it's right it's pretty good. When it's overcooked, it's horribly dry.

We've had mixed results with spelt. It seems fine in moderation, but seems to act up if we eat it too much (though it's very hard to tell with things that take a while so we can't tell whether it's actually bad or whether there's something that she's eaten and didn't notice).

Asher

soxbox wrote: »

We get down to Silly Yaks when we can to keep our freezer stocked as emergency food.

Are your Hot Cross Buns Fructose Friendly? With fruit in them? If so, I'm about to have a happy girlfriend, as she got very jealous when I was eating them last week.

Sorry dude, out FF hotcross buns are FF by virtue of not containing any fruit. They're still seasoned in a Fructose friendly manner though. I *think*. Will double check that tomorrow.

It may interest you to know that within the health and special dietary requirements marker, FF is regarded as "The next big thing" after Gluten free. Most restaurants are now offering Gluten Free options and a few are starting to offer FF options. Expect to see the range of available products increase dramatically over the next few years.

mts

you can just use rice vinegar. the sushi specific stuff is really just the vinegar plus sugar. we usually just buy the plain stuff and add teh sugar ourself since its cheaper, but the sugar isn't that important

Siska

Check with her doctor if guar gum supplement might help, or at least not hurt. It falls in the bean category, but it's a source of fiber, not protein. So it's not your typical bean and might not be something she would have a bad reaction to. It's eaten sometimes by people with Irritable Bowels Syndrome and other types of digestion problems. Another reason I suggest it is:

Some studies have found guar gum to improve dietary glucose tolerance. Research has revealed the water soluble fiber in it may help people with diabetes by slowing the absorption of sugars by the small intestine. Although the rate of absorption is reduced, the amount of sugar absorbed is the same overall. This helps diabetic patients by lowering the amount of insulin needed to keep the blood glucose at a normal level.

It also functions as an adjuvant for diabetic drugs that are sometimes employed for the treatment of noninsulin dependent diabetes. The effect is to help lower blood glucose levels. Thus, diabetic patients who are taking drugs should consult their doctors before supplementing with guar gum.

Now it says sugar and specifically glucose, but perhaps it helps with fructose as well. If she does try it only eat it soaked. It soaks up a lot of liquid so eating it dry can lead to blockage.

Also you may already have looked, but the wiki suggest these as "favorable" food products for fructose malabsorbers.

soxbox

Siska wrote: »

Check with her doctor if guar gum supplement might help

Some studies have found guar gum to improve dietary glucose tolerance. Research has revealed the water soluble fiber in it may help people with diabetes by slowing the absorption of sugars by the small intestine. Although the rate of absorption is reduced, the amount of sugar absorbed is the same overall. This helps diabetic patients by lowering the amount of insulin needed to keep the blood glucose at a normal level.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm fairly sure that would exacerbate the problem. Fructose Malabsorption is a problem with the body not processing the sugars properly in the first place, so undigested sugar ends up in the large intestine, where all the bacteria that live there have a field day. Anything that hampers sugar absorption is likely to make things worse. It tends to be the fibre part of whatever she eats that's got fructose/fructans/bad sugars, proteins are pretty much all good.

The other issue is that a lot of the information available on the internet is fairly out of date and often contradictory as there has not been a lot of research done and there seems to be a lot of variation between FM sufferers. My girlfriend seems to have most issues with high fructan foods (esp the onion and garlic family) - vinegar is on the bad list on wikipedia, but that's been fine, rye breads on the other hand (from their 'safe' list) have not.

tynic

My housemate was diagnosed last year with the same condition - she's still struggling to get variety in her diet, so unfortunately I don't have too many suggestions for you. Seconding the quiche idea. Also her gastro specialist told her that potatoes are ok if she soaks them in cold water for 10-24 hours before cooking, as this will leech out most of the starch and with it the fructose, and that seems to be working for her.

jess333

Hi, I know that this is a old post, but I also have fructose intolerance... The best thing I have done is brought a few of sue shepherds books on the low FODMAP diet ... You will get a list of foods to avoid and there's also a cook book! On the hot cross buns, she should be able to have the normal ones! I live by a "rule of thumb" that I learnt from going to see someone at Sue shepherds works, 150g of the right fruits every 4-5hours is fine, around 50g of the right dried fruits is fine every 4-5 hours .Plus 150ml of the right fruit juices every 4-5 hours.

Hope it helps!