Laura Schoenfeld: I assume that they’re talking about FODMAPs. Let me double check on that. It looks like an MAC is a vegetable or a plant-based starch that has complex fibers, and that includes nonstarchy vegetables as well as tubers. Tubers are things like potatoes, sweet potatoes, taro, yucca, and that kind of thing. As far as what a meal plan would look like, I mean, that’s kind of a difficult question because you’re not going to only eat those foods. I typically recommend that my clients eat at least a cup of nonstarchy veggies per meal, and there are going to be certain nonstarchy veggies that are higher in fermentable carbohydrates, so the FODMAP vegetables, specifically things like broccoli, onions, and garlic. As far as fruits go, that will be things like apples, pears. Anything that’s on a FODMAP removal list is something that’s going to be high in fermentable or these microbiota accessible carbohydrates.
Then as far as starches go, I mean, that’s going to depend on the person, what their carb needs are, and what their goals are. If they’re on a lower carb diet, they’re not going to be eating things like sweet potatoes, potatoes, yucca, taro, and that kind of thing. But if they’re eating a higher carb diet, then they could be eating a lot of that. That might be like a cup per meal. That could be two cups per meal. It could be none per meal. I would say that, for my clients, we usually are aiming for an average of a cup per meal of starch just because they’re on a higher carb intake for most of the women I work with and men too. I do work with some men who are working on increasing their carb intake, but basically, we would just want to be looking for increasing the FODMAP-containing vegetables and eating fiber-containing starches as well. Then it’s going to really come down to what that person’s individual needs are and what their diet is going to look like, so I can’t give you an exact meal plan. You just want to be making sure that the person is getting a variety of plant foods, that if they’re doing starches that they’re doing more of the fiber starches from plants as opposed to things like white rice, corn or other refined grains like that and then as many FODMAP-heavy, nonstarchy veggies that they can eat or that they want to eat. You don’t want to be stuffing yourself on vegetables. I do have some clients who have digestive issues that are resolved after they cut their veggie intake down a little bit. I would say nonstarchy veggies to tolerance is the general recommendation I have there.