Hello and welcome to the third instalment of The Digest, a dedicated space for you, our FoodMarble community, to get the answers to commonly asked questions across our social media platforms.
So, let’s kick off.
A question we receive regularly from our users is,
“How can I find my trigger foods?”
Our goal here at FoodMarble is to improve the quality of life for those who are suffering with digestive issues, and finding your trigger foods is at the core of our focus while developing both AIRE and the app.
Figuring out what foods or drinks are affecting your digestion is tricky. When foods aren’t digested fully, it can lead to a build-up of gases in your gut, which accumulates over the day. Eventually that build-up can make you feel bloated or give you other digestive symptoms. So how can you find your trigger foods?
We believe that day-to-day testing is the solution.
It’s important to highlight before going any further that this is a PROCESS.
It is very unlikely that you will discover what your trigger foods are after taking one single breath test.
Day-to-day testing is very useful, as digestive symptoms often result from the cumulative effect of multiple meals and rarely occur right after eating. The bloating or gassiness you might feel at the end of the day could have been caused by what you ate at breakfast, or the piece of fruit you had after lunch, or perhaps it’s the combined effect of different meals.
Stress, sleep and activity are also factors for everyone, since these can lead to a temporarily reduced ability to absorb certain food components, e.g. fructose.
So, a question we continually ask ourselves here at FoodMarble is,
“How can we make this process easier for our users?”
Let us introduce you to a new app feature – Trends.
Trends is a new feature now available in our app that simplifies the analysis of your results.
It allows you to easily assess your unique response to food over time, taking stress and sleep into account, to further identify key trends in your data and uncover those trigger foods.
What better way to explain this useful feature than to hear from someone who has lived and breathed through a real food trigger discovery…Everyone meet Sarah!
This is a diary of her week as she used the Trends feature as a beta tester for us:
So, what did Sarah learn from her Trends data?
“I found this feature very useful as it clearly displays a weekly overview of my daily minimum, maximum and average breath scores, and corresponding sleep and stress scores, so I can focus on any re-occurring trends and determine what foods might have caused these results.
One re-occurring trend I discovered was that I generally experienced a high Fermentation Score one hour after lunch. I am pretty regimented with my meals during the work week, as they are planned and prepared in advance and I usually rotate through the same options. This particular week I had a coconut flavoured Greek yogurt most days after my lunch, which might explain my afternoon bloating.
I wanted to test this in isolation. By using the Food Database within the app, I could see that Greek yogurt was high in the FODMAP lactose.”
“As I had ordered the FODMAP program with my device, I set aside some time to carry out a lactose FODMAP challenge as I also presumed latte coffees could be causing me to have bloating symptoms occasionally.
I was relieved to see that I had a positive response to lactose, and got great satisfaction from figuring this out by myself while in the comfort of my home. The process requires discipline in logging every day, but what I found out in a week has beaten months, even years of questioning what trigger foods are causing my symptoms. I am now even more determined to track my fermentation and continue to learn more about my digestion.”
For further reading about the FoodMarble AIRE Lactose Challenge, check out this article by my colleague Claire!
Finally, we want to hear your success stories, have you found your trigger foods yet?
We LOVE to hear feedback from our users, as this is critical input to the development of FoodMarble AIRE, so please, don’t be afraid to reach out, we are always here to listen! You can email hello@foodmarble.com or reach out through any of our social media channels.
FoodMarble AIRE is the world’s first personal hydrogen breath tester. It is a pocket-sized breath analysis device. It helps people with chronic digestive issues determine the foods that work best with their digestive system. To learn more about FoodMarble, visit foodmarble.com
