Quick Shot #8 Answer
Answer: Mediterranean Diet
For a patient with inflammatory bowel disease in remission, avoidance of specific foods is generally not recommended. Specifically, fiber does not need to be limited in these patients and doing so can have other unintended consequences on bowel habits. There has been no evidence that a more restrictive diet like the simple carbohydrate diet has better outcomes that a more traditional “healthy” diet like the Mediterranean diet at maintaining symptomatic remission. There is no indication in this well woman to use a liquid supplement based diet which can be overly restrictive and impact quality of life. Other dietary changes, including the Low FODMAP diet can be considered in patients whose disease are not well controlled or who have concomitant irritable bowel syndrome.