Food sensitivities and IBS triggers are hard to avoid when problem ingredients hide out in places you never expect to find them. How can you eliminate something from your diet when you don’t even know that it’s in your food? Yelling “Come out, come out, wherever you are!” doesn’t work on food, so this appendix helps you uncover some of the secret hideaways of sugar, gluten, lactose, and casein.
Sussing out hidden sugar
If eliminating sugar from your diet is important for your individualized IBS treatment, you need to know where all the sugar is lurking. Manufacturers of packaged food have been known to use different types of sugar in their sweet concoctions to spread the sugary ingredients throughout the ingredient list.
The first ingredient on the label list is the most prominent single ingredient in the product. But if manufacturers include sugar through many different ingredients, they may be able to load the product with sugar without tipping off casual label readers who assume that if sugar was the main ingredient, it would be first on the list.
To hunt down all the sugar in your pantry, check your labels carefully for these other words:
Amasake
Apple sugar
Barbados sugar
Bark sugar
Barley malt or barley malt syrup
Beet sugar
Brown rice syrup
Brown sugar
Cane juice or sugar
Carbitol
Caramelized foods
Carmel coloring
Carmel sugars
Concentrated fruit juice
Corn sweetener or syrup
Date sugar
Dextrin
Dextrose
Diglycerides
Disaccharides
D-tagalose
Evaporated cane juice
Florida crystals
Fructooligosaccharides (FOS)
Fructose
Fruit juice concentrate
Galactose
Glucitol
Glucoamine
Gluconolactone
Glucose, glucose polymers, or glucose syrup
Glycerides
Glycerine
Glycerol
Glycol
Hexitol
High-fructose corn syrup
Honey
Inversol
Invert sugar
Isomalt
Lactose
Levulose
Light or lite sugar
Malitol
Malt dextrin
Malted barley
Maltodextrins
Maltodextrose
Maltose
Malts
Mannitol
Mannose
Maple syrup
Microcrystalline cellulose
Molasses
Monoglycerides
Monosaccarides
Nectars
Pentose
Polydextrose
Polyglycerides
Powdered sugar
Raisin juice
Raisin syrup
Raw sugar
Ribose rice syrup
Rice malt
Rice sugar or sweeteners
Rice syrup solids
Saccharides
Sorbitol
Sorghum
Sucanat or sucanet
Sucrose
Sugar cane
Trisaccharides
Turbinado sugar
Unrefined sugar
White sugar
Xylitol
Zylose
Getting to the gluten
Avoiding gluten is a must for people with celiac disease, but it’s also a great guideline to follow if you have IBS symptoms that you’ve associated with anything on the following list.
Never fear if you discover your favorite product on this list. You can find gluten-free versions of many products at gluten-free stores and online.
Beer
Bread and breadcrumbs
Biscuits
Cereal
Communion wafers
Cookies, cakes, cupcakes, donuts, muffins, pastries, pie crusts, brownies, and baked goods
Cornbread
Crackers
Croutons
Gravies, sauces, and roux
Imitation seafood (for example, crab)
Licorice
Marinades (especially teriyaki)
Pasta
Pizza crust
Pretzels
Soy sauce
Stuffing
Digging for disguised lactose
You may have an IBS reaction to lactose and dairy products regardless of whether you’re officially lactose intolerant. Double check your food labels for signs of lactose, including milk, whey, cream, and milk solids, and watch out for the following foods:
Biscuits
Boiled sweets
Cake (especially cake containing cream filling)
Cheese
Chocolate
Cream
Ice Cream
Instant mashed potatoes
Mayonnaise
Milk
Peanut butter
Some pharmaceutical pills
Salad dressing
Yogurt
Catching up to casein
Casein is a protein found in all types of milk and used as a binder in many foods. It is also used in the production of plastics, nail polish, paint, glue and cosmetics. Some casein aliases you may find on your food labels include milk solids, sodium caseinate, caseinogen, and caseinate. In addition, you typically find casein in the following foods:
Bakery glazes
Breath mints
Chicken sausages
Coffee whiteners/creamers
Fortified cereals
Frankfurters
High-protein beverage powders
Ice cream
Infant formulas
Luncheon meats
Nutrition bars
Pâtés
Processed meats
Salad dressings
Soy products
Vienna sausages
Whipped toppings