Elaine Gloria Gottschall (1921–2005)

I finished with this book a while ago. I'm not sure if I picked it up a few years ago, when I was in the throes of UC, but I took it out again recently because I've been having GI symptoms related to the J-pouch, and I've been curious about ways to manage them with diet. This is a very involved diet, and seems to really only work if you're super strict about it. It's used for kids with autism as well as people with severe GI problems, specifically IBD. Since I've only had intermittent results managing my various issues through diet, it seems like a lot of work for very little reward, for me. Maybe if I were to truly and faithfully and completely adhere to the strict rules, I might get results, but for me the stress of managing a very strict regimen like that offsets any benefits I might see from the actual diet. At least that's been my experience. I have no doubt that it works for some people though, and I'm lucky enough that I have other means of managing stuff, while other people who try it might not. There are some interesting recipes here though.… (mehr)

The book "makes sense". If you know nothing about chemistry or digestion, etc, you won't see anything in here that is glaringly incorrect... in fact, I have no idea how "correct" the author is in her diet. Apparently it works for those who suffer from bowel disease, and I guess the proof is in the pudding, right?

The problem is that I have to think that it's dated information - the book was written in 1994 and focuses on science at that point. I am not a scientist so I don't know how much has changed, but one has got to suspect that things *have* changed since then. There are numerous current websites that are based on the information in this book, but they are still using the "facts" as presented in this book.

Many of these facts do make sense, but in other cases, the author actually admits that she "doesn't know why but it works"... case in point: chocolate isn't allowed because Haas (the original doctor on whom Gottschall has based her work) said it wasn't. Stevia isn't allowed but saccharin is. (She believes saccharin has gotten a bad rap over the years... even though it's banned for human consumption in many countries.)

Does it work? It's an awfully hard diet to follow but if you have chronic bowel problems, you might have the willpower to follow it - then you can tell the rest of us who are only human and want some rice with our dinners.… (mehr)