Beware, long post
All good questions. And I woulda had something to post but my power outage ate it, so I gotta start over.
One of the buggers about the whole Crohn’s problem is that what some people can tolerate diet-wise other cannot. One person’s advice doesn’t necessarily help another. My usual major bit of advice in this regard is try new foods in small doses at first to make sure it’s not going to bother you. Trial and error sucks, but it seems the only way we can figure out what our own bodies can tolerate. If you can’t remember everything, keep a log of the things you eat and what gave you issues and either cut back or cut out those foods.
I almost think that if you were going to create a cookbook you’d have to have three sections; one for mild Crohn’s, one for moderate Crohn’s, and one for major Crohn’s. Even then you still have the people with ostomies and the people with other surgeries that may even only be able to tolerate certain things.
As far as myself, I typically eat a lot of grilled food, both because it’s a bit healthier as far as eliminating fat, but also because I love adding a little wood smoke to the food in my outdoor grill. I’ll even grill in the dead of winter and if I had propane in my tank right now I’d probably be grilling in the current -8 degree Fahrenheit (around -22 celsius) temperatures in Ohio.
I tend to eat a lot of chicken and fish. Usually I’ll use the boneless, skinless breasts and my favorite fish is tilapia and catfish (both low in mercury, by the way) and a little grilled salmon or tuna from time to time. I also like red snapper. I’ve never had true sushi so don’t really know how my body processes that. My only experience thus far has been the kind with the Krab, California rolls, I think they’re called and I tolerate that fine. I can eat deep-fried fish when I’m feeling pretty good, but I have to take some antacid and anti-gas first. I think it has something to do with the fact that I don’t reabsorb bile anymore because of my loss of ileum and bile helps carry fats through the body to be absorbed and it doesn’t get absorbed very well and causes gas…a lot of gas. Probably also can account for the frequent burning stools I have as bile and stomach acid kinda pass on through without being absorbed.
I have about a million ways I fix chicken breasts, as it’s probably the most tolerable meat on my gut aside from fish. If I eat beef it’s usually in the form of hamburger or something slow cooked (baked steak, slow cooked chuck roast, Swiss steak, etc) as the collagen and connective tissues are already pretty processed or broken down. My hamburger choices are massive, from Salisbury steak to homemade sloppy Joes. I can tolerate hamburger pretty well because it’s already ground up and further chewing pretty much gets it to a point my bowels can process, but I’d also say my Crohn’s right now is only mild to moderate.
Far as rare/raw meat goes; I’m not a big fan of it anyway, so I don’t have a problem not eating it. I also take a tip from Alton Brown of Good Eats on the Food Network and cut against the grain to make the beef fibers smaller. Cutting with the grain of the meat creates those long strings of beef that are so hard to chew. My experience with steak tartar (when it’s not just chopped raw steak, that is) is that it’s cut real super thin against the grain, if I’m correct? That makes the fibers smaller and easier to chew and also easier to digest incidentally. Same goes for rare roasts. I might suggest some papaya juice or some other natural juice that has natural enzymes that break down meat. They say papaya juice makes a good marinade because of those properties, making the meat more tender. I tend to avoid rare or raw meat anyway just to be safe from any bacteria that might’ve gotten by the ol’ FDA here in the US.
Pork seems tolerable as well as long as I trim the fat pretty good. Some folks have problems with pork as it tends to be hard on the gallbladder. I don’t have this problem. I have a whole pork loin out in the freezer right now that’s just awaiting my purchase of some propane for my grill and then I’m slow smokin’ that puppy to make some pulled pork sandwiches. Mmmmmmmmm! Pulled pork sandwiches!
Veggies are indeed a problem, at least, if you like them crunchy. Again, I’ve never had a problem with this as I’m not a big fan of semi-cooked veggies. I even like my Chinese food to be a bit more fork tender, even though I use chopsticks. I do like fresh veggies with dip from time to time, which kinda sucks though. Again, if I eat any fresh veggies I’ll eat the less stringy varieties, like the florets of cauliflower or broccoli and skinless cucumbers with small to no seeds in them or sliced tomatoes with no skin and I chew them extra well. I’ll even skin sweet peppers and eat those. I also don’t eat ANY fresh veggie if I’m having a flare. I save those as a treat for my good days. I don’t eat anything with thick indigestible hulls like corn. I’ll eat cooked sweet peas, but I cook them pretty well and chew them a lot before they go down my gullet. Same goes for beans. I LOVE country style green beans, where they are cooked down real super tender in water mixed with some bacon drippings. Not very heart healthy, but damn they’re good! Just drink a glass of wine with ‘em to help the fats pass through the blood. Makes a hillbilly feel all sophisticated.
Potatoes are my friend during a flare. It’s water soluble fiber, so it’s good on the gut. I’ll make a lot of baked or mashed potatoes during the bad times and change up the ingredients to make them something new each time. I don’t usually have issues with sour cream or cheese, so I’ll mix that into the potatoes. And potatoes are a good source of potassium for those of you on Prednisone, as prednisone tends to leech your potassium.
All in all, I usually don’t have major issues with lactose intolerance, unless I haven’t had any dairy for a while, but I know that quite a few people with Crohn’s do. Cream sauces don’t seem to bother me so I make quite a few of those with white wine or an alfredo sauce using olive oil instead of the butter. I’ll even make my own cream sauce for my tuna casserole. Heck, large quantities of garlic seem to give me more issues than dairy does.
I’ll also eat quite a bit of pasta, but lately I have to make it less aldente because of my distinct lack of molars to chew with. I really need to find some money laying in the street so I can just get dentures.
Things that I’ve had to give up because of Crohn’s that I hated to give up: Corn, corn/tortilla chips, though I can eat bugles and cheese puffs and my theory is that the corn flour is more processed and finer than the rougher corn meal or flour in tortilla chips or corn chips. Popcorn went away too and I used to eat an entire bag of popcorn in one sitting while reading a book. That loss really made me sad. Salad…I only eat salad when I’m feeling pretty healthy and then only if it’s made from red leaf, green leaf, butter/bibb, or spinach, or a mixture of those. And I still chew it very well. I’ll tend to eat salsa if the bits are fine, but I eat it with baked Lays or Pringles or other chip that holds up well to liquid and isn’t made from corn meal.
It’s taken me a long time to learn what I can and cannot tolerate and when, and I’m still finding foods that I can’t eat from time to time. I’m just very happy that I have a family of country cooks that taught me the ropes and for shows like Good Eats that teach you the why’s of cooking food and not just the cooking of the food itself. I think I’ve learned more from that show on food preparation than any other place and it has given me a wealth of knowledge on how to modify the base model to get what I need out of cooking to satisfy my palate and still keep my Crohn’s in check.
And with all that long-windedness said and done I still say to anyone out there to keep track of what you eat and keep in mind the things you can and can’t eat and when, because what may be tolerable to some isn’t always tolerable to others. Eat what you can and keep experimenting. If there’s one thing Crohn’s does it teaches us to be better cooks for our own bodies and keeps us away from a lot of fast food, which in the end is a good thing.
Also, chew, chew, chew your food. The more you chew the more you break down the food, the more saliva enzymes are mixed in to further break it down. Though my mealtimes have doubled in the time it takes me to eat I feel better knowing that when I swallow I’m not swallowing a big hunk of something that’s bound to get stuck because I’m eating too fast or not chewing properly. The fast people can wait for my ass to get done. They don’t have to deal with the issues of a stricture, I do.
