Hi all,
The FODMAP book is for people with fructose malabsorption- a condition where the person can't digest fruits and foods, with a lot of natural fruit fructose, when these foods are eaten alone. Typically indigestible foods are apples, pears, onion and tomato juice. Eating these alone causes wind, intense stomach pain and diarrhoea. The person must eat these foods with other foods such as protein and/or carbohydrates, to bypass the small bowell. So, fruit and yogurt is good, or a sandwich with fruit.
It's slightly different to what David is talking about. F.M. is a reaction to natural foods-fruits and some vegetables. It's uncommon, but becoming more well known as the real cause of "irritable bowel" syndrome which no-one knew how to deal with before. At this point in time, F.M. sufferers can eat small amounts of table sugar, because the intestines do not see it as pure fructose and do not react to it. Large amounts of sugar have larger amounts of fructose and may cause symptoms. Remember, Dr Shepherd has not read David's book (that I know of) and is only trying to help people with F.M. In that field, her work is ground breaking. I know because I was diagnosed with F.M. in 2006.
In his books, David is saying processed sugar is bad for us- every person, regardless of whether they can eat fruit on its own or not, have F.M. or not. Remember, sugar is a natural food from the sugar cane, which is now highly processed. But it is the processed "fructose molecule" in sugar that is the problem, not the glucose molecule, which means that we can eat glucose without problems. But you can't separate sugar at home into fructose and glucose and throw the fructose out. So, we have to decide to stop eating sugar.
David said eating natural fructose in fruit-the sweet part-in fruit was not bad, because the fruit comes with fibre. He wasn't talking to F.M. sufferers. We all understand that we can't mix some bran with crystalised fructose and call it a fruit! Neither can we make processed sugar trouble-free.
Dr Shepherd and manufacturers call their products "fructose friendly" meaning that those with F.M. can eat them without reacting. I'm sure when they read David's book they will change this name.
In the meantime, we are on the cutting edge of the research about sugar's bad effects. We have to avoid sugar, but there are no reliable "no sugar" labels yet. Keep spreading the word, and one day there will be!
