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Bites: December 2025 - Your Zero-Regrets Holiday Guide

Bites: December 2025 - Your Zero-Regrets Holiday Guide

Written & Curated by: Patsy Catsos, MS, RDN

 

As the holidays arrive, it’s a great time to slow down and stay connected to the habits that help you feel your best. In this edition, we’re sharing practical ways to navigate festive gatherings on a special diet, simple strategies for giving your favorite recipes a low-FODMAP makeover, and tips to help those living with IBD better manage symptoms and enjoy the season. Cozy up with a little holiday inspiration to help you stay well with every bite.

 

Staying on Track With Your Special Diet

If you are new to following a special diet, check out these tried-and-true tips. With a little advance planning, you can continue to follow your low-FODMAP, gluten-free diet, or Mediterranean diet during the holidays. Keeping exceptions to a minimum will help you feel great so you can enjoy family gatherings and events.

 

  • Offer to bring something to the party, and make sure it is something you can eat on your special diet.
  • If the host or hostess is a close friend or family member, consider tactfully asking what will be served at the party.
  • Eat a small meal before the party if you don’t know what will be served, or if the menu doesn’t sound like a good fit for you. At a cocktail party you can then just skip most of the food and concentrate on conversation. At a dinner party, take and taste just a little something to be polite, or make small exceptions to your diet as needed.
  • If you are hosting the party, consider serving fare that is “deconstructed”, so everyone can please themselves. Salad bars, sandwich bars, charcuterie boards, and mashed potato sundae bars are fancy enough for parties, with artisan sourdough breads and crackers, gourmet meats, fancy cheeses, and specialty garnishes. If you are hosting a meal, serve buffet-style with certain ingredients or garnishes served on the side, so everyone can serve themselves appropriately. Make it extra special by using your best serving dishes and tableware.
  • Plan more activities that don’t revolve around food. You and your guests can build some new holiday traditions and memories starting this year! Go for a walk or a hike. Try ice skating! Attend a community event or concert. Play a board game or some touch football or have a sing-along.

Many special diets (including low-FODMAP and Mediterranean) aren’t so rigid that an occasional exception will derail your progress. Do your best, get back on track quickly, and you’ll continue to build helpful habits. That said, making too many intentional exceptions can interfere with how you feel and how well the diet works for you. However, for people with celiac disease, a strict gluten-free diet is still non-negotiable.

 

 

Festive Favorites, Low-FODMAP Approved

Many holiday traditions revolve around food, and we all look forward to enjoying our favorite party foods this season. Fortunately, many savory recipes can be modified relatively easily to reduce their FODMAP content. Here is a process you can use to adjust recipes to fit on a low FODMAP diet.

 

  • Start Simple – Start with a recipe that isn’t all about onions, garlic, mushrooms, or beans. For example, a salsa recipe will be easier to modify than a bean dip recipe. A turkey taco soup recipe will be easier to modify than one for French onion soup. Shrimp and grits will be easier to modify than shrimp scampi.
  • Be Realistic – How many servings does the recipe make? Ignore what the cookbook says–be real here. Will you eat ¼ of the recipe? Do the math and figure out how much of each ingredient you would consume if you ate ¼ of the original recipe.
  • Rely on Resources – Compare the amount of each ingredient to the low FODMAP (green serving size) shown in the Monash University FODMAP Diet App. Adjust the amounts of each ingredient until your serving of each ingredient is at or below the low FODMAP serving size.
  • Find Suitable Alternatives – In some cases you may find that you can make substitutions with lower FODMAP ingredients without compromising the recipe. For example, if a salsa calls for white onions, opt for Vidalia onions or scallions instead since they have larger low FODMAP servings sizes and you can therefore use more of them in your recipe! Similarly, consider replacing red or yellow bell peppers with green bell peppers.
  • Make it Yours – If you still find that the volume or flavor profile of the recipe isn’t going in the direction you would like, add in some low-FODMAP ingredients you do like that can fit in with the overall recipe. As a general rule, if the recipe is not a baked item such as a cake or muffins, it can be successful with your unique interpretation.

Low-FODMAP Baking

Low FODMAP baking can be a little more challenging. Replacing regular flour with low-FODMAP or gluten-free flours in your favorite recipes for cakes, cookies and pastries isn’t often successful, even when the products claim to be 1-for-1 substitutes. We advise you to start with recipes that were developed and tested for use with these specialty flours. One of our favorite online low-FODMAP recipes sources is FODMAPeveryday.com. Remember that a low FODMAP diet does not have to be strictly gluten-free. You can enjoy a regular small cookie or a couple of bites of regular cake on your low FODMAP diet.

 

Check out the video below from the Gastro Girl Podcast for an in-depth discussion and more tips for cooking on a low-FODMAP diet.




IBD Support for a Joyful Season 

Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis are inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD). Although some symptoms of the two conditions overlap, IBD is less common and is different from IBS. As the name suggests, IBD is a group of diseases that cause inflammation of the intestine and lead to ongoing symptoms and complications.

 

Have Your Symptoms Evaluated

The Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation says symptoms of IBD include persistent diarrhea, abdominal pain or cramps, rectal bleeding, fever and weight loss, joint, skin, or eye irritations, and delayed growth in children. The disease often starts during adolescence or young adulthood, and up to 28% of individuals diagnosed with IBD have a close family member with Crohn’s or ulcerative colitis. If you have any of these so-called alarm symptoms, talk it over with your provider. IBD is managed very differently from IBS, usually with medication.

 

A Diet for IBD

A number of anti-inflammatory diets for IBD are being investigated, to see which ones might help people with IBD achieve or maintain remission of their disease. No one “IBD diet” has yet been proven to be better than the others. If you have IBD, consider these tips.

  • The available diet options should be used in addition to medication for IBD, not to replace medical management.
  • The Mediterranean diet is a great option for IBD. It is an anti-inflammatory diet that reduces your risk for chronic disease overall, not just IBD. And it is a very enjoyable, less restrictive way to eat than some other IBD diets.
  • If you experience frequent diarrhea, replace fluids with water rather than fruit juice, soda, or regular milk, which can make diarrhea worse.
  • During a flare, remove the scratchy parts of food and prepare foods that are soft and more easily chewed into small particles. For example, peel foods that can be peeled, and prepare cooked vegetables instead of eating raw ones. These modifications enhance digestion and are soothing to the digestive tract.
  • Ask your doctor to keep an eye on your nutritional status. Some people with IBD need vitamin or mineral supplements.

IBS-Like Symptoms in Remission

Many people with IBD continue to have abdominal pain, excess gas, and altered bowel habits even with their disease in remission. Low-FODMAP diet is often recommended in these cases. Not sure how to eat for your IBD or IBS? Consult a dietitian for a personalized nutrition assessment and plan.