Vegetables and FODMAPs: 61 foods rated

Artichoke is one of the richest natural sources of inulin, the long fructan that chicory root is farmed for. The globe is eaten leaf by leaf, which spreads the dose over a meal but does not lower it - and boiling does not help, because fructans are water-soluble and most people drink the liquid or eat the heart wet. A separate survey, measuring the three fructooligosaccharide oligomers by ion chromatography, puts it plainly: of the vegetables investigated, artichokes contained by far the most FOS, followed by onions.

• Muir J et al., J Agric Food Chem 55 (2007) 6619-6627 and 57 (2009) 554-565, fructans and short-chain carbohydrates measured in Australian vegetables and fruit
• Tuck C et al., J Hum Nutr Diet 31 (2018), FODMAP content of common plant-based and processed foods
• Hogarth A.J. et al., J Agric Food Chem 48 (2000) 5326-5330, three fructooligosaccharide oligomers measured by ion chromatography

Beetroot is the sugar beet's close relative and it shows: it carries sucrose in quantity, and fructans on top. Pickled beetroot measures lower than roasted, because the sliced root sits in vinegar and the water-soluble sugars move into it.

• Muir J et al., J Agric Food Chem 55 (2007) 6619-6627 and 57 (2009) 554-565, fructans and short-chain carbohydrates measured in Australian vegetables and fruit

Black beans are among the highest-GOS beans, and they are usually cooked in the liquid rather than drained from it - a pot of frijoles keeps its cooking water on purpose, because that is where the flavour went. The technique that makes them good is the one that keeps the GOS in the bowl.

Cauliflower is one of the vegetables mannitol was measured in, and its recent career as cauliflower rice is what makes that matter. A few florets is a small dose; a bowl of riced cauliflower replacing a bowl of rice is several times a whole head's worth of what makes it high.

• Muir J et al., J Agric Food Chem 55 (2007) 6619-6627 and 57 (2009) 554-565, fructans and short-chain carbohydrates measured in Australian vegetables and fruit

Green asparagus is at its highest the day it is cut, and its fructooligosaccharides fall measurably during storage - the spear spends them staying alive. It is one of the rare foods where the older stock at the back of the shelf is the gentler one, though nothing brings it low.

• Muir J et al., J Agric Food Chem 55 (2007) 6619-6627 and 57 (2009) 554-565, fructans and short-chain carbohydrates measured in Australian vegetables and fruit

Leek is the allium that can be split. The white bulb carries the fructans; the dark green leaf carries far less and is used exactly as the bulb would be, in soups and stocks. Cutting the leek in two at the colour change is the whole technique.

• Muir J et al., J Agric Food Chem 55 (2007) 6619-6627 and 57 (2009) 554-565, fructans and short-chain carbohydrates measured in Australian vegetables and fruit

Mannitol is the mushroom's own osmolyte - what it makes to hold water and survive drying - so it is not an impurity that better farming would remove. It is water-soluble, which is the one lever available: tinned mushrooms leave much of it in the brine and measure well below fresh ones.

• Lenhart A. & Chey W.D., Adv Nutr 8 (2017) 587-596, systematic review of the effects of polyols

Onion carries mostly GF2 - a short fructan chain of three units - concentrated in the fleshy layers rather than the papery ones. Short chains ferment fast, which is why onion acts quickly rather than hours later. Long browning does break some of it, since dry heat above about 135 degrees degrades fructan, but not reliably enough to make fried onion a safe form: what is left is concentrated by the water that boiled off. Two things were measured on the onion itself. Across Sturon, Hysam, Durco and Caribo, fructans are the main carbohydrate and the SHORTEST oligomer is the major one - which is what makes onion fructan so readily fermented. And STORAGE changes it: free fructose rises markedly over months in store, attributed to the fructans hydrolysing. The fifth variety, Grano de Oro, is simply different - low fructan and FOS, high reducing sugars - so a low-fructan onion is a real thing, just not one a label tells you about. One figure puts this in proportion, and it is about the diet rather than the plant: in a survey of more than 15,000 Americans, WHEAT SUPPLIED ABOUT 70 PER CENT of all the inulin and oligofructose eaten, and onions about 25 - two foods for roughly 95 per cent of the total, against a daily average of 2.6 g of inulin and 2.5 g of oligofructose. That share belongs to a particular cuisine, not to the crop: a diet built on chicory or artichoke would divide differently. A separate survey, measuring the three fructooligosaccharide oligomers by ion chromatography, places the onion second of the vegetables it investigated - behind the artichoke and ahead of everything else it measured.

• Muir J et al., J Agric Food Chem 55 (2007) 6619-6627 and 57 (2009) 554-565, fructans and short-chain carbohydrates measured in Australian vegetables and fruit
• Jaime L. et al., J Agric Food Chem 49:2 (2001) 982-988, fructan and fructooligosaccharide of onion through storage
• Moshfegh A.J. et al., J Nutr 129:7 Suppl (1999) 1407S-1411S, inulin and oligofructose in the diets of Americans
• Hogarth A.J. et al., J Agric Food Chem 48 (2000) 5326-5330, three fructooligosaccharide oligomers measured by ion chromatography

Pinto beans are the base of refried beans, which are cooked down rather than drained - so the GOS stay and then concentrate. Canned and rinsed pinto beans are a different measurement from the same beans mashed in their own liquid.

Shallot is the most concentrated of the alliums in FODMAPs by weight, and it is the one that hides: a restaurant vinaigrette, a sauce, a mignonette. Nobody lists shallot as a main ingredient, and the quantity that flavours a whole dressing is enough.

• Muir J et al., J Agric Food Chem 55 (2007) 6619-6627 and 57 (2009) 554-565, fructans and short-chain carbohydrates measured in Australian vegetables and fruit

Shiitake is used for umami as much as for substance, and dried shiitake is steeped to make broth - which puts the mannitol straight into the liquid everyone drinks. A dashi built on shiitake is the highest-exposure form of this mushroom, higher than eating the caps.

• Lenhart A. & Chey W.D., Adv Nutr 8 (2017) 587-596, systematic review of the effects of polyols

The heart is what survives trimming, and the inulin is spread through the whole globe rather than concentrated in the leaves - so a heart carries proportionally as much. Jarred hearts have been boiled, and fructans are water-soluble: drained hearts measure below fresh ones, which is the one preparation that helps here.

• Muir J et al., J Agric Food Chem 55 (2007) 6619-6627 and 57 (2009) 554-565, fructans and short-chain carbohydrates measured in Australian vegetables and fruit
• Tuck C et al., J Hum Nutr Diet 31 (2018), FODMAP content of common plant-based and processed foods

Bitter gourd carries its FODMAPs as galacto-oligosaccharides and not as fructans: Prichard measured 1.12 g of GOS per 100 g and detected no fructans at all. GOS are the class that legumes carry, which is unusual for a vegetable and is what puts this gourd on the axis rather than its sugars - it is barely sweet. The figure is per 100 g, and a bitter gourd is normally eaten stuffed or stir-fried in modest quantity.

• Prichard R et al., Int J Food Sci Nutr 67 (2016) 383-390, FODMAP content of foods commonly consumed by ethnic minority groups
• contents per 100 g, not per serve

Broccoli can be split. The stalk carries clearly more fructan than the florets, so a head trimmed down to the green tops measures lower than the same weight of whole broccoli. Most recipes discard the stalk anyway - here it is worth doing on purpose.

• Muir J et al., J Agric Food Chem 55 (2007) 6619-6627 and 57 (2009) 554-565, fructans and short-chain carbohydrates measured in Australian vegetables and fruit

Edamame is the soya bean picked immature, and the GOS accumulate as the bean matures - so edamame measures below the dried soya bean it would have become. Jiang compared 54 edamame lines with the mature soybean of the same line and found the mature seed highest in stachyose, the dominant GOS of soya, then unshelled-dried edamame, then shelled-dried. The usual serving is also small, because they are eaten from the pod one at a time.

• Jiang G-L et al., J Sci Food Agric 100 (2020) 3987-3994, seed sugars in edamame against mature soybeans
• it ranks the three without publishing a stachyose figure, and the edamame it measures is oven-dried rather than fresh

Kimchi is cabbage plus garlic and onion, and both of those are among the five vegetables measured highest in fructan. Fermentation cuts both ways here: the bacteria consume some of the cabbage fructan, and they produce mannitol, a polyol, as they go. One family falls and another rises, which is why the level lands in the middle rather than at either end. Monash gives a SERVE THRESHOLD, which is a different object from a content. A threshold answers how much, and for grams per hundred the papers are the source, not the app.

• Monash University FODMAP composition tables and app, for the serve threshold
• Lenhart A. & Chey W.D., Adv Nutr 8 (2017) 587-596, systematic review of the effects of polyols

Parsley root is a storage root, and storage roots keep their winter reserve as fructan - that is what the level measures. It is used as an aromatic rather than as a vegetable, one piece in a pot of soup, and that small dose is what keeps it here rather than higher.

• Muir J et al., J Agric Food Chem 55 (2007) 6619-6627 and 57 (2009) 554-565, fructans and short-chain carbohydrates measured in Australian vegetables and fruit

Porcini are almost always used dried and rehydrated, and the soaking water is the prize - it is what goes into the risotto. That water holds the mannitol the mushroom gave up. Using the mushrooms and discarding the liquid reverses the usual advice for this dish and is the choice that matters here.

• Lenhart A. & Chey W.D., Adv Nutr 8 (2017) 587-596, systematic review of the effects of polyols

Sauerkraut is cabbage, which is low, fermented into something that is not. Fermentation cuts both ways here: the bacteria consume some of the cabbage fructan, and they produce mannitol, a polyol, as they go. One family falls and another rises, which is why the level lands in the middle rather than at either end. Monash gives a SERVE THRESHOLD, which is a different object from a content. A threshold answers how much, and for grams per hundred the papers are the source, not the app.

• Monash University FODMAP composition tables and app, for the serve threshold
• Lenhart A. & Chey W.D., Adv Nutr 8 (2017) 587-596, systematic review of the effects of polyols

The white bulb of spring onion is high in FODMAP fructans, but the green tops are low FODMAP — use only the green part for flavour.

White asparagus is the same plant grown under earth, and it is almost always peeled and boiled with the water thrown away - which takes some of the water-soluble fructans with it. That preparation, not the colour, is why it sits below the green spear. Jarred white asparagus loses more still, into the brine.

• Muir J et al., J Agric Food Chem 55 (2007) 6619-6627 and 57 (2009) 554-565, fructans and short-chain carbohydrates measured in Australian vegetables and fruit

Bamboo shoots are genuinely low: harvested young, before the carbohydrate builds. Vegetables split on this axis by which organ you eat - storage organs like onion and garlic hoard fructans, while leaves, stems and young shoots do not. Knowing which part of the plant is on the plate answers most of the question.

• Muir J et al., J Agric Food Chem 55 (2007) 6619-6627 and 57 (2009) 554-565, fructans and short-chain carbohydrates measured in Australian vegetables and fruit

Brussels sprouts are low at a normal serving and stop being low above one - the threshold is around about half a cup. That is the shape of this whole axis: it publishes serving limits rather than verdicts, because the fructan or polyol load scales with how much you eat and there is no amount that is free.

• Muir J et al., J Agric Food Chem 55 (2007) 6619-6627 and 57 (2009) 554-565, fructans and short-chain carbohydrates measured in Australian vegetables and fruit

Cabbage is low at a normal serving and stops being low above one - the threshold is around about a cup shredded. That is the shape of this whole axis: it publishes serving limits rather than verdicts, because the fructan or polyol load scales with how much you eat and there is no amount that is free.

• Muir J et al., J Agric Food Chem 55 (2007) 6619-6627 and 57 (2009) 554-565, fructans and short-chain carbohydrates measured in Australian vegetables and fruit

Celery is low at a normal serving and stops being low above one - the threshold is around about a third of a stalk. That is the shape of this whole axis: it publishes serving limits rather than verdicts, because the fructan or polyol load scales with how much you eat and there is no amount that is free.

• Muir J et al., J Agric Food Chem 55 (2007) 6619-6627 and 57 (2009) 554-565, fructans and short-chain carbohydrates measured in Australian vegetables and fruit
• Lenhart A. & Chey W.D., Adv Nutr 8 (2017) 587-596, systematic review of the effects of polyols

Chicory leaf is low in fructans, and the confusion on this axis comes from its root. The plant's ROOT is the industrial source of inulin — industrial inulin is sold as 'chicory inulin' — and chicory is a Compositae, the family a survey of fructooligosaccharides puts highest of all. But a family rank is not a food rank, and the leaf has been measured since: its fructans run around 0.1% of fresh weight, against 15 to 20% in the root, and the Monash app puts both endive and witloof in the green. The LEAF is the blanched head eaten as a salad; the root, ground for coffee or farmed for inulin, is a different food on this axis and stays high.

• Campbell J.M. et al., J Agric Food Chem 45 (1997) 3076-3082, fructooligosaccharide composition of foods and feeds
• Perovic J et al., Food Chemistry 339 (2021), chicory as a food ingredient, for the leaf-versus-root figures

Dulse is not a land plant, and the fructans and GOS this axis counts are storage carbohydrates that land plants make. Seaweed stores different ones, which human enzymes also cannot split but which ferment more slowly and in smaller quantities than a serving of onion delivers. Whether an algal storage carbohydrate belongs on this axis is decided by Gibson and Shepherd's criterion — does it ferment rapidly in the proximal colon — and not by which sugar it is built from.

• Gibson P.R. & Shepherd S.J., J Gastroenterol Hepatol 25 (2010) 252-258, the framework this axis rests on
• Muir J et al., J Agric Food Chem 55 (2007) 6619-6627 and 57 (2009) 554-565, fructans and short-chain carbohydrates measured in Australian vegetables and fruit

Fennel is genuinely low: what goes on the plate is the bulb, and at a serving it stays low. Vegetables split on this axis by which organ you eat - storage organs like onion and garlic hoard fructans, while leaves, stems and young shoots do not. Knowing which part of the plant is on the plate answers most of the question.

• Muir J et al., J Agric Food Chem 55 (2007) 6619-6627 and 57 (2009) 554-565, fructans and short-chain carbohydrates measured in Australian vegetables and fruit

Gherkins are genuinely low: cucumber, which is among the lowest vegetables. Vegetables split on this axis by which organ you eat - storage organs like onion and garlic hoard fructans, while leaves, stems and young shoots do not. Knowing which part of the plant is on the plate answers most of the question.

• Muir J et al., J Agric Food Chem 55 (2007) 6619-6627 and 57 (2009) 554-565, fructans and short-chain carbohydrates measured in Australian vegetables and fruit
• Tuck C et al., J Hum Nutr Diet 31 (2018), FODMAP content of common plant-based and processed foods
• USDA FoodData Central, the national nutrient database, queried for the sugar profile

Jicama is genuinely low: a root that stores inulin, but in a form measured low at a serving. Vegetables split on this axis by which organ you eat - storage organs like onion and garlic hoard fructans, while leaves, stems and young shoots do not. Knowing which part of the plant is on the plate answers most of the question.

• Muir J et al., J Agric Food Chem 55 (2007) 6619-6627 and 57 (2009) 554-565, fructans and short-chain carbohydrates measured in Australian vegetables and fruit

Oyster mushroom is genuinely low: the one mushroom low in mannitol, unlike the button. Vegetables split on this axis by which organ you eat - storage organs like onion and garlic hoard fructans, while leaves, stems and young shoots do not. Knowing which part of the plant is on the plate answers most of the question.

• Muir J et al., J Agric Food Chem 55 (2007) 6619-6627 and 57 (2009) 554-565, fructans and short-chain carbohydrates measured in Australian vegetables and fruit
• Lenhart A. & Chey W.D., Adv Nutr 8 (2017) 587-596, systematic review of the effects of polyols

Parsnip is low at a normal serving and stops being low above one - the threshold is around a small portion. That is the shape of this whole axis: it publishes serving limits rather than verdicts, because the fructan or polyol load scales with how much you eat and there is no amount that is free.

• Muir J et al., J Agric Food Chem 55 (2007) 6619-6627 and 57 (2009) 554-565, fructans and short-chain carbohydrates measured in Australian vegetables and fruit

Red cabbage is low at a normal serving and stops being low above one - the threshold is around about a cup shredded. That is the shape of this whole axis: it publishes serving limits rather than verdicts, because the fructan or polyol load scales with how much you eat and there is no amount that is free.

• Muir J et al., J Agric Food Chem 55 (2007) 6619-6627 and 57 (2009) 554-565, fructans and short-chain carbohydrates measured in Australian vegetables and fruit

Rocket is genuinely low: a leaf, and leaves store little. Vegetables split on this axis by which organ you eat - storage organs like onion and garlic hoard fructans, while leaves, stems and young shoots do not. Knowing which part of the plant is on the plate answers most of the question.

• Muir J et al., J Agric Food Chem 55 (2007) 6619-6627 and 57 (2009) 554-565, fructans and short-chain carbohydrates measured in Australian vegetables and fruit

Seaweed is not a land plant, and the fructans and GOS this axis counts are storage carbohydrates that land plants make. Seaweed stores different ones, which human enzymes also cannot split but which ferment more slowly and in smaller quantities than a serving of onion delivers. Whether an algal storage carbohydrate belongs on this axis is decided by Gibson and Shepherd's criterion — does it ferment rapidly in the proximal colon — and not by which sugar it is built from.

• Gibson P.R. & Shepherd S.J., J Gastroenterol Hepatol 25 (2010) 252-258, the framework this axis rests on
• Muir J et al., J Agric Food Chem 55 (2007) 6619-6627 and 57 (2009) 554-565, fructans and short-chain carbohydrates measured in Australian vegetables and fruit

Spinach is genuinely low: a leaf eaten in quantity but low. Vegetables split on this axis by which organ you eat - storage organs like onion and garlic hoard fructans, while leaves, stems and young shoots do not. Knowing which part of the plant is on the plate answers most of the question.

• Muir J et al., J Agric Food Chem 55 (2007) 6619-6627 and 57 (2009) 554-565, fructans and short-chain carbohydrates measured in Australian vegetables and fruit

Sweet potato is low at a normal serving and stops being low above one - the threshold is around about half a cup. That is the shape of this whole axis: it publishes serving limits rather than verdicts, because the fructan or polyol load scales with how much you eat and there is no amount that is free.

• Muir J et al., J Agric Food Chem 55 (2007) 6619-6627 and 57 (2009) 554-565, fructans and short-chain carbohydrates measured in Australian vegetables and fruit

Taro is genuinely low: a starchy corm rather than a fructan store. Vegetables split on this axis by which organ you eat - storage organs like onion and garlic hoard fructans, while leaves, stems and young shoots do not. Knowing which part of the plant is on the plate answers most of the question.

• Muir J et al., J Agric Food Chem 55 (2007) 6619-6627 and 57 (2009) 554-565, fructans and short-chain carbohydrates measured in Australian vegetables and fruit