Hi Millie, we understand that aspects of the diet can be confusing. One reason why the more restrictive Elimination Phase is meant to be short is because it does remove or greatly minimize fructans an GOS (and therefore prebiotics) from the diet, such as those mentioned in that section of the article. Long-term, this type of restriction could negatively affect the microbiome. Removing them at first allows your system to calm down and for you to create a clean slate, so to speak, for the Challenge Phase. At that point, you would systematically re-introduce foods that contain fructans and GOS to assess what amounts you can eat, and in what frequency, without triggering IBS symptoms. By the time you get to the third stage of the diet you will have expanded it to include foods that do contain a certain amount of FODMAPs and therefore you will have re-introduced prebiotics and be able to benefit from what they bring to the table.

Hi Doris, we asked Erica Ilton, RDN to answer your question and this is her response:

“I am not quite sure what Doris is asking, but assume it’s whether xylooligosaccharides (XOS) are FODMAPs or not.

If so, I do know that they are short-chain carbs and prebiotics, but I’m not finding anything about them specifically being FODMAPs in my preliminary research…which means that my answer would be an extrapolation. One article from 2015 (Muir, Gibson, et al) does say that XOS “might act as FODMAPs” but I’m not sure if more research has been done in the past 5 years. A 2006 study in severely constipated pregnant women found “no adverse effects” with intake of 4.2 g XOS daily for 4 weeks, but that’s not much to go by!”

XOS do not appear to be present naturally in food and are available in supplemental from many companies, so my suggestion to Doris would be to do a test-to-tolerance “challenge” the same way we do with other FODMAPs.”