What the bleep can I eat?!


That's how I felt when I was juggling multiple related health conditions, like SIBO (Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth), MCAS (Mast Cell Activation Syndrome), POTS (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome) and autoimmunity. We all know that unnecessary food restriction is BAD. But sometimes a temporary elimination diet is worth trying, and sometimes that falls on top of an already restricted diet.

What foods are...

These are the types of questions this tool can help you answer. We are not promoting food restriction. We are trying to help patients maximize variety in their diet when they are unlucky enough to have multiple categories of food limitations. In the world of MCAS, POTS, autoimmunity, IBS, SIBO, etc. this tends to come up.

As practitioners, we were tired of spending hours cross-referencing food lists for patients, so we made this tool to do it for us. We share it with you and invite you to help us improve it. Have foods or food lists you’d like to see added? See mistakes? Have suggestions? Please let us know at [email protected].

Disclaimers

First, the food lists for each diet are known to be highly imperfect. Most of the lists are acknowledged by their authors to be “best guesses” based on limited evidence. We have done our best to identify the most trustworthy sources of information (learn more here), but this exercise has shown us how little consensus there is (for example, there isn’t even consensus about which foods should be considered tree nuts or stone fruits). Secondly, this website is still in the beta testing stage. There may be typos or mistakes. Use at your own risk, and double check results. Please let us know if you find any errors and we will fix them. You can contact us at [email protected]. Third, we highly recommend only implementing a restrictive diet with the guidance of a qualified practitioner. Almost every food in this database is beneficial for 99.9% of people. Food restriction should ideally only be done briefly and strategically, to identify potential intolerances. Humans and our gut microbes benefit from eating the widest possible variety of foods.

About Us

Jill Brook is a nutritionist and patient with MCAS, POTS, and autoimmunity. Mike Brook is a computer programmer and health data analyst. Together they enjoy doing various projects with/for the POTS/MCAS community, such as research data analysis, The POTScast and DoodleThru. They met as undergrads at Princeton University and have been married 25 years.