How to Determine What Soups to Eat When You Have IBS
When you have a touchy colon, as in IBS, you have to be careful about what you eat because different foods may trigger your IBS. However, right now you could make a list of foods that you are able to eat and ones you cannot eat. You could make healthy soups out of the ones you can eat.
But there is another aspect to this situation. There is a third list, a list of all the foods (vegetables) you never eat for whatever reason. Most likely, the third list is the longest list of all. Get out a sheet of paper and write out these lists right now.
Let's say your lists look like this:
Foods I Can Eat
- Kale
- Lettuce
- Tomatoes
- Onions
- Thyme
- Basil
- Bell Pepper
- Carrots
- Beets
- Ginger
- Turnips
Foods I Can't Eat
- Radishes
- Parsnip
- Broccoli
- Green Beans
- Cabbage
- Cauliflower
Foods I Never Eat
- Mint
- Lemon
- Avocado
- Bok choy
- Parsley
- Cilantro
- Leeks
- Horseradish
- Beet greens
- Shallots
- Collard greens
- Dandelion greens
Getting Started
Do you see how you have a lot of potential to make many different types of healthy soups that are great-tasting? You could make a roasted red pepper soup with turmeric for anti-inflammation. Or an onion soup made with green onions, yellow onions and leeks with parsley to freshen the breath.
When you have IBS, it's best to limit the number of vegetables in your soup, but nevertheless, you can still load up the vegetables in them. For example, in the roasted red pepper soup, you can use 8 red peppers or even 12. In the onion soup you could use 3 bunches of green onions, 3 yellow onions and 3 leeks plus add parsley to sweeten the breath. You might even want to try adding fennel bulb to it. With fennel bulb, you just slice it up like celery and add it into the soup. It gives a nice pleasant flavor, somewhat like licorice.
You might try a bok choy soup with carrots and use an entire head of bok choy and a full two pound bag of carrots. Why not try a tomato soup with lots of cilantro and lemon? That might be a real award winner for your family. Or how about carrot collard greens soup?
When you use dandelion greens, remember that they tend to be bitter, and only about five leaves is the tolerance level for them.
After you know you can handle a soup that only uses two or three vegetables, you can then begin to add meats or protein to the same recipes. For example, you could add chicken to the bok choy soup with carrots. Or how about beef with the onion soup? With the roasted red pepper soup, you might try turkey.
Of course, the only protein foods you're adding to these healthy soups are ones that don't upset your digestive tract.
You can beat this IBS but you're not going to beat it if you keep reducing the list of foods you eat. You need diversity and it's the diversity of plants that will contribute to your healing.