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FODMAPs: the five sugar families behind the IBS diet

FODMAP is an acronym, not a substance: Fermentable Oligosaccharides, Disaccharides, Monosaccharides And Polyols. The five families share a mechanism rather than a chemistry — they are small carbohydrates that a lot of people absorb poorly, so they pull water into the small bowel and are then fermented to gas in the colon.

Not a diagnosis, and not a first step. Coeliac disease must be tested for BEFORE cutting wheat, because the test needs gluten in the diet to work. Weight loss, bleeding, anaemia, a first onset after 50, or a family history of coeliac disease, inflammatory bowel disease or bowel cancer are reasons to see a doctor rather than start an elimination diet. The low-FODMAP diet is a supervised three-phase protocol with a dietitian, not a permanent way of eating.

The five categories, and which foods carry them

Oligosaccharides come in two kinds. Fructans are chains of fructose, and the dominant dietary sources are wheat, rye, onion and garlic — which is why so many people conclude they cannot tolerate bread when what they cannot tolerate is fructan. Galacto-oligosaccharides are the ones in legumes, and essentially nobody digests them, which is why beans behave the way beans behave.

Disaccharides here means lactose, and lactose is only a FODMAP for people whose lactase activity has declined — which globally is most adults, though far less so in northern Europe, where lactase persistence is common.

Monosaccharides means fructose in excess of glucose. Fructose is absorbed comfortably when glucose accompanies it; when a food carries substantially more fructose than glucose, the surplus is not. Honey, apple, pear, mango and high-fructose corn syrup are the usual entries.

Polyols are the sugar alcohols — sorbitol, mannitol, xylitol, maltitol — which occur naturally in stone fruit, mushrooms and cauliflower and are added to sugar-free chewing gum and sweets, where the laxative warning on the packet is telling you exactly what a polyol does.

Why this is a protocol and not a diet

The low-FODMAP approach has three phases and only works if all three happen. Restriction removes high-FODMAP foods for a few weeks — long enough to see whether symptoms respond, and no longer. Reintroduction then tests each category separately, in graded amounts, to find which ones actually cause trouble for this person and at what threshold. Personalisation keeps only the restrictions that earned their place.

In trials, a substantial proportion of people with IBS improve during the restriction phase — the figure varies between studies but sits somewhere between half and three quarters. Almost nobody turns out to be sensitive to all five categories, which is the entire reason the reintroduction phase exists: the restriction phase is a diagnostic instrument, and stopping there throws away the answer.

Stopping there also has costs. Long-term restriction reduces fibre and fermentable substrate, and measurable shifts in the gut microbiota — bifidobacteria in particular — have been reported. A diet designed to be run for six weeks with a dietitian is not a diet designed to be run for six years off a website.

Why this page has no numbers on it

The measured FODMAP content of individual foods, and the serving thresholds that go with it, are the product of a specific laboratory programme at Monash University in Melbourne, and that dataset is licensed. Reproducing those values would be copying someone else’s work, so this page does not.

What is not licensed is the biochemistry: which category a food family belongs to, how the protocol works, and what the categories do in the gut. That is what is here. For the serving-level thresholds — which matter, because most FODMAP problems are dose problems rather than food problems — the Monash app is the primary source and is worth the money if you are actually doing the protocol.

The dose point is worth dwelling on. Very few foods are simply “not allowed”: most have a serving size below which they are fine and above which they are not, and that threshold is personal. A list that says “no onion” is a much cruder instrument than a threshold that says how much onion.

FODMAPspar groupe d'aliments

Des bandes, pas des décimales. Là où une quantité publiée pour un aliment précis n'a pas pu être vérifiée contre un document, cette surface imprime la bande plutôt qu'un chiffre — et chaque aliment ci-dessous renvoie à sa propre page nutrition pour que vous voyiez ce qu'il y a d'autre.

Ce qui change le chiffre

• Serving size decides most of it: the same food can be fine at 40 g and a problem at 120 g.
• Ripeness changes fructose and polyol content — a firm banana and a spotty one are not the same food here.
• Long fermentation degrades fructans, which is why traditional slow-fermented sourdough is better tolerated than fast-baked bread by many people.
• Cooking in water leaches some FODMAPs out; draining canned legumes and rinsing them removes part of the GOS.
• Garlic-infused oil carries the flavour but not the fructans, which are water-soluble and stay behind.

Où ailleurs ces aliments sont signalés

Aliments élevés sur cette page qui siègent aussi dans une bande élevée sur au moins deux des quinze autres. Les bandes rassurantes ne sont pas comptées, donc une ligne ici signifie que l'aliment collecte vraiment des étiquettes plutôt que d'être seulement beaucoup mentionné.

Ça vaut la lecture avant de retirer quoi que ce soit. Les listes de cette surface ont chacune été écrites pour une personne différente avec un problème différent, et elles convergent sur le même petit groupe d'aliments denses en nutriments. Les satisfaire toutes à la fois produit un régime que personne n'a conçu et que personne n'a testé.

Parler à quelqu'un qui peut réellement tester

Nothing on this surface is personal medical advice. If a food genuinely makes you ill, if you have had a kidney stone or a gout attack, or if you are considering removing a food group from your diet, the person to talk to is your doctor, pharmacist or a registered dietitian — they can test for the things that can be tested for, which a table cannot.

Sources :Monash University low-FODMAP programme — the laboratory that measures FODMAP content and publishes the serving thresholds. Values are licensed and are not reproduced here. · British Dietetic Association and national gastroenterology guidance on the three-phase structure and on dietitian supervision. · Guidance that coeliac serology must be performed while gluten is still in the diet.· Noms d'aliments et liens : la base alimentaire du site. Vérifié2026-09-06.

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