Stomach bloating: The easy alternatives helping to reduce your symptoms – tips from expert
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Christmas Day and a bloated belly are often a linked experience. With so much festive food available and little regard for portion sizes, experiencing the swollen and occasionally painful health condition can be inevitable. Rob Hobson, head of nutrition at Healthspan offered his top tips to help relieve the dreaded Christmas bloat.
It’s no secret that eating your bodyweight in roast potatoes, stuffing, pigs in blankets and Yorkshire puddings – all washed down with a glass or two of fizz – is likely to leave you feeling sluggish and bloated for hours.
Certain foods are known to slow down digestion and delay gastric emptying, leading to that bloated feeling of fullness.
Christmas foods and drinks are notorious for contributing to this hampered digestion system.
Gas-producing foods such as Brussel sprouts and cabbage and fizzy drinks and alcohol – there are many key components increasing the likelihood of bloat.
When asked about which foods are the most difficult to digest, Rob said: “Heavy rich foods can be difficult to digest.
“Also, the higher the saturated fat content the longer they sit in your stomach, and this can be an issue for people who suffer with indigestion and heartburn.
Food examples of this include cheese, cream sauces, rich puddings and fatty cuts of meat.”
Rob’s top tips for avoiding a Christmas bloat include:
Ditch heavy sauces in place of stock-based sauces
Pop the top off your mince pie to reduce the pastry and serve with half fat crème fraîche or yoghurt (try adding vanilla pod for natural sweetness)
Cook your roast potatoes in olive oil instead of goose fat
Serve buffet foods with vegetables and not crisps or breads e.g., dips.
Be FODMAP aware
FODMAPs means fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides, and polyols are short chain carbohydrates which are poorly absorbed in the small intestine and are prone to absorb water and ferment in the colon increasing bloating symptoms.
Many festive foods contain ingredients with certain types of carbohydrates synonymous with FODMAP foods.
Many of the otherwise healthy vegetables that accompany a traditional Christmas roast dinner are very high in FODMAPs.
If you’re prone to digestive trouble, swap cauliflower, Brussel sprouts and leeks for low-FODMAP alternatives such as kale, courgettes, spinach and carrots.
Additional tips include:
- Plan to graze rather than gorge
- Eat little and often throughout the day, rather than having three large meals
- Wait a couple of hours after your Christmas main course before having dessert to help avoid bloating, indigestion and heartburn
- Chew your food slowly to maximise enzyme production
- Drink mint or ginger to help relax the muscles in the gut – beware though that this is only for bloating and not heartburn as drinking these teas will make things worse encouraging stomach acid up from the gut
- Fizzy drinks can make you bloated so watch what you’re mixing your drinks with.
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