Using this book with your team
What to take to a dietitian appointment, what to ask, and what this book is and is not.
This book has a fixed position on about a dozen contested foods, and your team may take a different one on any of them. That is not a problem as long as you know which items are in question, so here is how to find out in the ten minutes you are likely to get.
What to ask
Take five questions rather than a list of everything you eat. The five that most change what you can cook are:
Smooth peanut butter, yes or no. See peanut butter.
A pinch of ground spice or dried herbs, yes or no. See herbs and spices.
Well-cooked onion and leek, yes or no. See alliums.
Cauliflower and broccoli florets, yes or no. See brassicas.
Oats, and if you have a high-output stoma or urgency after surgery, whether they actually want you to eat them. See oats.
Then two more that are about the shape of the whole thing rather than about food. How long am I expected to be on this, and who decides when I step back up. And is there anything about my situation that makes the usual advice not apply.
What to take with you
The name of the leaflet you were given, if you were given one, since your team will assume you are following theirs rather than any book. A note of anything that has actually caused you trouble, which is worth more than a theoretical list. And a rough account of what you have been managing to eat, because if the answer is very little, that changes the conversation entirely and is the more urgent problem.
What this book is
Recipes developed from published NHS dietary guidance and clinical literature, and checked line by line against hospital food lists. They have not been through a test kitchen or dietary analysis software, and no hospital or dietitian has endorsed them. This is culinary guidance and not clinical prescription.
Where anything here contradicts what your dietitian or medical team have told you, follow your team. They know your bowel, your operation and your treatment, and this book knows none of those things.
New or worsening symptoms, including bleeding, vomiting, severe pain or no output from a stoma, are for your medical team now, not for a cookbook. The foods list and the diet explain the rest.