If you want a diet for your inflammatory bowel disease, or IBD, you might be tempted to try a so-called "white diet." One version preaches excluding white foods, while the other promotes them. A 2010 research report published in Inflammatory Bowel Disease by scientists at Royal Brisbane Hospital in Queensland, Australia, documents that the Western diet, rich in both nutritious and non-nutritious white foods, may be good or bad for IBD, depending on your specific food choices.
Inflammatory Bowel Disease
IBD requires a detailed diagnostic workup including visual inspection of your intestinal tract with endoscopy, biopsy and various radiological methods. However, IBD is also sometimes called irritable bowel disease or irritable bowel syndrome, or IBS. It can represent a spectrum of disorders including Crohn's disease and microscopic colitis. Severity and prognosis varies, but they share many aggravating factors and dietary precautions. The Royal Brisbane study reports research showing that obesity along with dietary fats and sugars, among the most common white foods, are contributing factors in causing and aggravating IBD.
No-White Food
One version of the "white diet" is named for what it forbids -- white food. Red, as in high protein red meat, brown, as in rice, and colorful, leafy, orange and red vegetables are said to be better than white -- the color of fat and cholesterol-laden foods like cheeses, whole milk or the nutritionally depleted white flour, sugar and white rice. However, the no-white diet also eliminates healthful white foods like oatmeal, low-fat milk and a juicy, peeled apple. On this kind of white diet you might be tempted to select a box of dark chocolates over a Swiss cheese sandwich on enriched bread. But the chocolate may inflame your IBD, while the healthful white foods might soothe it.
All-White Food
The all-white food diet includes exactly what the no-white food diet prohibits. All-white diets, with fatty cheeses, eggnog and Alfredo sauce on pasta, may be heavy on the rich, creamy and sugary foods some people consider comfort foods, especially if you add white wine and white chocolate. This diet may contribute to obesity and ignore other factors including the effects of insulin resistance in uncontrolled diabetes and short-chain fatty acids such as butyrate which can modify intestinal permeability, the key to nutrient absorption, which the Royal Brisbane study documented as common in Western diets and pathogenic for IBD.
Diet Alternatives
The Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research suggests that for certain kinds of IBD, no diet is sufficient for treatment. The variety of IBD known as ulcerative colitis may require an ileal-anal pouch, laparoscopic surgery or medication. Genetic differences also affected how patients metabolize drugs used for IBD. Mayo Clinic researchers pioneered work on a prescription anti-inflammatory drug, Asacol, for IBD and have even found a use for prescription medications containing nicotine in ulcerative colitis.
Common Sense
The all-white food and the no-white food diets assume the color of a food is good enough to tell a food's nutrient and calorie content and its bowel-irritant properties. The common wisdom which warns against telling a book by its cover matches the scientific evidence against such diets. Never try these or other fad diets for documented medical conditions without talking to your doctor first.
