Foods to Avoid With Ulcerative Colitis

Has ulcerative colitis (UC) made you hesitant to eat for fear of causing painful symptoms? If you know for sure what foods make you feel worse, it’ll be easier to live with the disease. One review noted that people with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) who had a diet full of fiber from fruits and vegetables, and low in animal fats, dairy, and processed food, had the fewest flares and best health outcomes. Doctors and nutritionists recommend that people who are diagnosed with ulcerative colitis change their dietary intake to ensure that they are consuming much-needed nutrients without exacerbating symptoms.

What’s the best way to identify foods to avoid if you have UC? Elimination diets, where patients remove certain foods from their diet to see if their symptoms abate, are a good way to identify common food triggers.

To get started on one, record all the food you eat during the day in a diary or journal along with any symptoms you experience. You can do this with pen and paper or with phone apps.

There are also a number of special diets that people with UC may want to try, although dietary recommendations will vary from person to person. For example, the Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD), which is designed especially to control IBD symptoms, focuses on vegetables, fruits, meats, and nuts, limits dairy, and eliminates grains, processed foods, and all sugars but honey. Studies on the effect of the SCD diet on UC are limited, but there is more recent research about the diet’s effect on Crohn’s disease, another type of IBD.

The preliminary results of a 2021 clinical trial comparing how people with Crohn’s disease fare on the SCD and the Mediterranean diet showed that 46.5 percent of people on the SCD achieved symptomatic remission after six weeks, compared with 43.5 percent of those on the Mediterranean diet. Additionally, 5.4 percent of patients on the SCD achieved a reduction of systemic inflammation after six weeks, compared with 3.6 percent of those on the Mediterranean diet.

Another special diet is the low-residue or low-fiber diet, which restricts foods that increase bowel activity — like prune juice, bran cereals, legumes, and leafy vegetables — and allows mostly white rice, white bread, well-cooked vegetables, fish, poultry, and dairy products. That said, a high-fiber diet, in conjunction with a low-fat diet, has otherwise been shown to be beneficial in UC patients, per research from 2021. So a low-fiber diet may be more appropriate for individuals with severely uncontrolled disease, because increased bowel activity due to higher fiber consumption may worsen UC symptoms.

Be sure to speak with your doctor or a dietitian before starting any special diet for UC. If you start removing particular foods from your diet, you may develop nutritional deficiencies. Your doctor or nutritionist can test your nutrient levels and help you create a meal plan that’s right for you while meeting all your nutritional needs.