Reviewed by Emily-Jane Hills Orford for Readers' Favorite

Living with IBS or any form of digestive disorder can be a challenge at best. What can one eat? What foods are making one sick – full of gas, cramps, and worse, like Crohn’s or colitis? How does one eat through a flare-up and make things better? There are lots of advice channels out there: Dr. Google is full of good and not-so-good suggestions. But you don’t need to spend hours surfing the web for answers. Maurizio Bombardi’s The Low-FODMAP Diet Cookbook for Beginners is a good place to start. Not only are there detailed explanations and answers – like what FODMAP stands for (it’s actually an acronym for all kinds of bad carbs that are making you sick) – as well as meal suggestions and delicious recipes. But let’s start with the FODMAP diet, as the author suggests. It’s really quite simple. There are only three basic steps: eliminate (remove all bad carb foods from the diet and anything else you feel is triggering your symptoms), re-introduce (one by one, allow specific foods back into your diet and see how your body tolerates it), and, finally, personalization (making the diet uniquely yours, complete with foods you enjoy).

Maurizio Bombardi’s book, The Low-FODMAP Diet Cookbook for Beginners: Wholesome Recipes to Soothe Your Gut is a valuable resource for everyone suffering from digestive issues. Complete with detailed information on the diet plan itself and the foods that affect our bodies, the author leads readers through suggestions on how to improve one’s eating habits without undue suffering. Eating doesn’t have to be a struggle; neither does it have to be bland and boring. The author provides menu suggestions and 100 recipes to try. Each recipe is well-detailed, with a concise list of ingredients and clear instructions. By following the suggestions and experimenting with some of the recipes in this book, everyone can eat their way back to enjoying good, wholesome food.