Customer Reviews

How to Cook for Crohn's and Colitis: More Than 200 Healthy, Delicious Recipes the Whole Family Will Love

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK. It is terrible, and completely not as advertised. The title led me to think that this was a book of recipes for those suffering flareups of Crohn's or ulcerative colitis. However, most of the recipes have ingredients that are NOT good for IBD patients at least during flare-ups. Red meat, frying, spices and insoluble fiber are spread throughout these recipes and anyone who knows anything about this knows that these are not advised. Maybe these things work for you Brenda, and that's great, but they don't work for everyone and at a minimum, your book does not really give full disclosure on this. I would suggest that the next edition have a better more accurate title and better disclaimers on the individual to individual variation in ability to tolerate the types of food ingredients I have noted here.

For a really GOOD book for IBD patients, I'd refer you all to What to Eat with IBD by Tracie Dalessandro, MS, RD, CDN. She really gets it right.

Happy eating and recovery all.

If you have active Crohn's or Colitis, approach these recipes with caution. I follow a low-residue diet to minimize pain due to inflammation and I expected this book to be more tailored to those kinds of concerns. As I flipped through it for the first time, I was disappointed by the number of recipes that called for beans, onions, celery, salad greens and other high-fiber vegetables and fruits that are difficult for many people with IBD to digest. I can pick up any cookbook and adapt it for IBD, but I was hoping to be able to prepare and eat most of the dishes in this book without having to worry so much about altering them.

To the author's credit, the recipes look very tasty for those who can eat them and they are easy to follow. The information at the beginning of the book is helpful for the uninitiated or new learner. But ultimately, this is the sort of cookbook I would hope to use while in remission and does not seem particularly suited to Crohn's and Colitis.

I was diagnosed with UC in December of 2001. I studied up on the disease to educate myself and I found recipes here and there that I liked. The problem was that many of the recipes required the purchasing of expensive items at the health food store that I had never heard of. Another problem was that the food was stuff that I normally wouldn't eat. This book is perfect for an average UC patient. By average I mean you're not used to spending a ton of money on your nightly dinner. These recipes taste wonderful and I have already noticed an improvement in my flare-ups. The rest of your family won't tell the difference that the mac and cheese is bowel friendly. I think this is the best UC cook book currently out on the market. I love it!

I'm sad to speak ill of a fellow Crohnie, but Brenda Rocher is doing the same thing most people do with Crohn's cookbooks: irresponsibly generalizing. Like a few other reviewers, I picked this book up thinking, "Ooh, recipes without insoluble fiber or complex sugars," but nope. It's just your typical "as long as it's low fat and talks about nutrition a lot, it's a Crohn's diet," book. I couldn't believe it when I saw recipes calling for ingredients that are known, common agitators for Crohn's - red bell peppers, beans, tomatoes, white sugar, just to name a few.

Crohn's disease has notoriously immense inconsistencies from patient to patient; while I cannot eat any raw vegetables, popcorn, spices or sugar, a good friend of mine with Crohn's could not eat any grains but all the vegetables he wanted. I have trouble losing weight (hello, all-carb diet!) and he had trouble gaining it. The problem here is that there is NO SUCH THING as a Crohn's cookbook. You can only be guided through establishing your own boundaries for food, something this book doesn't help with. It really freaks me out to think about family members buying this book for their loved ones with Crohn's and thinking, see, if you just ate right, you'd be all better! It's like telling someone with severe diabetes that if they could just regulate their blood sugar, they'd be fine. It's a hell of a lot more complicated than that.

The recipes in this book are standard cookbook fare. If you can eat spicy Creole dishes and a tossed salad with baby spinach, tomatoes, and sliced onion, you hardly need a special cookbook! If you can't eat those things, you'll be picking through this looking for appropriate recipes just as you would with any other cookbook.

The only difference between Roscher's recipes and traditional versions lies in her paranoid avoidance of saturated fat. For example, she recommends replacing butter with a butter/canola oil blend to reduce saturated fat. Bad advice for anyone with a diseased ileum: the shorter fat chains in butter are much easier to absorb than the longer fats in canola oil.

Not being a doctor or dietitian, she's also bought into some ridiculous health hype. She recommends that we use only omega-3 eggs. She clearly hasn't done the research to learn that the omega-3 fat in those eggs is mostly ALA, which has very little health value. (Like many non-professionals, she may have been confused by a study about liquid eggs enriched with the important omega-3 fats DHA and EPA, a totally different product from in-shell omega-3 eggs.) Given the high medical costs many of us suffer, I don't appreciate suggestions like these that simply waste money.

You can get recipes and bad nutritional advice for free on the Web, so there's really no reason to pay for this book.

This easy-to-read book starts out with a distillation of the current scientific understanding of crohn's disease, yet another case of an immune system gone crazy. Brenda Roscher treats the complexity of this disorder with respect, but leaves out the unnecessary details, making the text an enjoyable read. As a University of California trained Biologist who has specialized in Immunology since the eighties, I am impressed with her understanding and ability to communicate the important aspects of just what has gone wrong in crohn's.
I,Mrs.,being the cook in the family have thoroughly enjoyed this cookbook. I've tried a number of the soup recipes as a first course and they would do me proud to serve at a luncheon on their own. The entrees I've tried have been delicious and the easy to follow directions are generally quick and self explanatory. A few members of our extended families have these conditions and so for Christmas gifts we've purchased copies of the book for them to enjoy. I'll be using some of the recipes for Thanksgiving!Thank You Ms. Roscher.
Dr.& Mrs. Christopher Snow

I bought this book recently after being diagnosed with Crohn's, and it has been a great resource and a tremendous help.

The first chapter gives a succinct yet very clear overview of IBD, including how it is diagnosed and common treatment methods used today. There is also a great section that outlines how specific aspects of our diet affect IBD. I learned a great deal about what to look for in my food just from these first pages. Tips on what to look for on nutrition labels are spelled out objectively, so that one can make there own decisions about potentially aggravating ingredients.

Then there are the recipes, which are delicious. They are clearly organized by food type, and each that I have tried has been easy to make and fantastic. The nutrition information from the first chapter is put in to practice throughout the recipes, and it is also easy to adjust your own staple food items based on the information provided.

The book itself is packaged beautifully with a clear Table of Contents and a comprehensive index for fast searching.

I have been feeling great, and attribute a great deal of that to the fantastic nutrition advice in this book. Try it out - you'll be eating some great meals that your IBD won't punish you for.

Some unknown person sent me this-I would never buy a crohn's diet/recipe book. This book is full of ingredients that cause gas, bloating, cramps. and runny poop. I have had crohn's for 42 years, and I eat a bland diet-no vegetables, no roughage, limited fruit, to control my symptoms so I can work. This book is ridiculous. If you have IBD do yourself a favor, and pass on this idiotic garbage.

Not a great book, no pictures. A whole section on salads,sorry most Crohns patients can't eat salad. I thought this book was a waste of money. I was hoping this would be a helpful book, but I would not have bought it if I had looked through it first.

I'm very pleased with the purchase of this book. This book is full of new information to me that I had no idea about or hadn't even thought to try. For instance... Miracle Whip verses Light Mayo. I've always been a mayo user, it was really hard to even have to switch to the Light stuff. Even that started giving me trouble recently. I purchased some Miracle Whip after the tip from this book and low and behold... I felt fine after eating it. It tasted really good too, something different for a change and so light on the gut!

Although I haven't tried any recipes from this yet there is a wide variety to pick from and simple looking too. I look forward to trying the recipes soon. All of the new tips alone were sure worth the price to me. I highly recomend this book to anyone with these conditions!!!

Cheers to Brenda Roscher and Dr. James F. Marion, MD!