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Eating with IBD (Crohn's & Ulcerative Colitis)

Gentler meals for flares, nourishing ones for remission, and protein and calories throughout.

By Camille McLaughlin, RDN, LD, registered dietitian nutritionist

Inflammatory bowel disease (Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis) changes what feels good to eat, and it changes with your symptoms. The guidance here changed recently, and it changed in a direction most people find surprising: a Mediterranean-style plate is now the starting point for essentially everyone with IBD, flare or no flare, rather than something you graduate to once things settle. Through both, getting enough protein and calories matters, because IBD can make it hard to hold weight and nutrients.

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How it works

You eat a varied, anti-inflammatory, Mediterranean-style plate as the baseline, and when symptoms are rough you change the TEXTURE of that food rather than cutting food groups out of it. Cooked instead of raw, peeled instead of skin-on, blended instead of whole. Protein and calories stay up throughout, because IBD makes both harder to hold on to. Triggers are genuinely personal, so the plans are a base you adjust.

✓ What you'll eat

  • Well-cooked, peeled vegetables and soft fruits
  • Lean, easy-to-digest protein: poultry, fish, eggs
  • Refined or gentle grains during flares; whole grains as tolerated in remission
  • Smooth nut and seed butters instead of whole nuts during flares
  • Plenty of fluids

✕ What you'll limit

  • Rough, hard-to-break-down textures when symptoms are active (raw skins, whole nuts, popcorn), by softening them rather than dropping the food
  • Very fatty, fried, and heavily spiced foods
  • Anything you've identified as a personal trigger
  • Sugar alcohols and, for some, lactose

What changed about fiber, and who actually needs to limit it

For years the standard advice in a flare was to strip fiber out, and a lot of people ended up staying on a narrow, low-residue diet long after the flare had passed. In 2024 the American Gastroenterological Association moved away from that. Their guidance now puts a Mediterranean pattern first for essentially all IBD, and reserves real fiber restriction for one specific situation: people with a stricture, meaning a narrowed section of bowel, or with obstructive symptoms. If that is you, this is a conversation for your GI team, not something to decide from a website.

For everyone else, the useful distinction is texture rather than fiber. A raw apple and a peeled, stewed apple contain nearly the same fiber, but they do not feel the same going through an inflamed gut. Cooking, peeling, blending and chopping fine all make food gentler without taking the food away. That matters, because the long-term cost of a permanently narrow diet is real: fewer plants means less of what feeds the bacteria in your gut, and people with IBD are already at higher risk of running short on iron, B12, vitamin D and calcium.

The practical version: in a flare, soften and simplify rather than subtract. Cook the vegetables well, peel what has skin, blend soups smooth, choose smooth nut butters over whole nuts. Then widen again as symptoms settle, rather than staying narrow because it felt safe. If eating widely again is frightening after a bad flare, that is common and worth naming to your team.

One more thing worth saying plainly: food does not cause IBD, and no eating pattern treats it. Your medication does that work. What food can do is make you feel better day to day, protect your nutrition through a disease that makes it hard to hold on to, and support your gut rather than starve it.

Who it's a good fit for

People with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis who want meals that flex between flare-friendly and remission-friendly while keeping nutrition up.

A dietitian's note

IBD nutrition is highly individual and changes with your disease activity. These plans are a supportive starting point, not medical nutrition therapy. Work with your GI team or an IBD dietitian, especially during flares or if you're losing weight.

Common questions

Should I eat low-fiber or high-fiber with IBD?
It depends on where you are. Lower-fiber, gentle foods usually feel better in a flare, while more fiber is often fine and beneficial in remission. Let your symptoms and your care team guide you.
Is there one 'IBD diet'?
No single diet works for everyone. Some people do well with specific approaches (like a Mediterranean pattern in remission), but triggers are personal, which is why these plans are a flexible base.
My doctor told me to eat low fiber. Why does this page say something different?
Both can be true at once, because they answer different questions. Low fiber is standard advice during a flare, and it is standard for anyone with a narrowing in the bowel, where fiber is a real mechanical risk. What changed is the advice for the rest of the time: the current gastroenterology guidance no longer asks people in remission to stay on a restricted diet, because long-term restriction was not keeping anyone in remission and was costing them nutrition. So if your doctor said low fiber for a flare or for a stricture, follow that. If it was said once years ago and never revisited, that is the conversation worth having at your next appointment.
Can eating well put my IBD into remission on its own?
No, and we would not want you to delay treatment hoping it will. IBD is an immune-driven disease and the medication is what controls the inflammation. What food does is real but different: it covers the nutrition that gets lost when you are inflamed or eating around symptoms, it keeps you from arriving at a flare already depleted, and it makes day-to-day eating less of a guessing game. Think of the plan as working alongside your treatment, not instead of it, and keep your gastroenterology team in charge of the disease itself.

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