Gallbladder Disease Diet

GallBladder is a pear-shaped organ under the liver. Simply put, it is a storehouse of bile, which is produced by liver for digestion of fat. So it has a very important role to play in our digestive system. If the gallbladder is affected, the digestion is seriously affected. This article will deal with various gallbladder disease diets.
Gallbladder Disease Diet
If it would not have been for gallbladder, our digestive function would have not have been able to digest the fats that we consume properly. This pear shaped organ beneath the liver stores bile, generated by the liver, to digest the fats we consume. Gosh one can imagine, how over worked livers of many people are, who consume a lot of fats! Even so, coming back to the gallbladder, it stores the bile. Now when we eat and our intestines digest food, the gallbladder, through the common bile duct, secretes bile. That duct actually connects the bladder and liver to the small intestine.

Now the flip side is if the gallbladder is affected on account of gallstones or any gallbladder disease, the fats do not get digested properly because the bile duct is blocked. Now, gallstones develop due to crystallized cholesterol and bile salts. In case gallstones develop, people experience pain on the right side of the abdomen. So then what do you do? If its chronic, then serious measures have to be taken, if not, then what is the solution? Well, the solution is simple. A gall bladder diet entails reduction the amount of fats in the food you consume in different ways. By that, I mean low fat diet. That refers to gallbladder disease diets. So given below is a low down on gallbladder disease diets.

Diets For Gallbladder Disease
Basically for a gall bladder disease, you have to adhere to a low fat diet. To counter attack the gall bladder disease, avoiding meat, especially red meat is extremely crucial. Another important thing to remember in case of gall bladder problems, is to eat small amounts of food during the day instead of stuffing yourself with large meals.

What can you have?
Having beets, cucumbers, lemons, and a few other green vegetables is good for tackling the gall bladder diseases. You can also have whole grain and enriched breads, low fat snack crackers, popcorn sans butter, plain pasta, barley, oatmeal, fat free home made pancakes and so on. There are many other things like salad, (without vinegar), almonds, peanuts, cream cheese, a bit of peanut butter, which can be eaten if you have gall stones or a not a very serious gallbladder disease. Now comes the interesting part- the sweets and desserts. The desserts you can have are jelly beans, marmalades, puddings made with skimmed milk, fat free cakes and cookies, hard candy, jams, non fat frozen yogurt and maple syrup. This was a brief outline of what you can include in gallbladder disease diets.

What to avoid?
If you are suffering from a gallbladder problem, consuming these foodstuffs can be really detrimental to your already sensitive bladder. So lets take a look at what all you better avoid if you have any inkling of a bladder problem. I am sure these are the things we usually hog on or eat a lot. So avoid whole milk and all the dairy products made of whole milk like whole milk cheese and cream. The next category to chick is breads with cheese, eggs and stuff like that, along with biscuits, waffles, muffins,pancakes, sweet rolls, doughnuts, potato chips, fried rice and chowmein noodles. Fried vegetables with cream and cheese is a big no no. Soups made from fats, cream soups, ice creams, cream puffs, chocolate, pastries and pudding made from whole milk.

Sample Menu for Gallbladder Disease
Breakfast: Your breakfast could include, for instance, a grapefruit, 1 or 2 bananas, 2 slices of whole wheat toast, 1 tbsp jelly or jam and 2 tsp margarine. You can also have bit of coffee. You would obviously choose what and how much to eat depending on your appetite.

Lunch: For lunch may be you can go for fat free vegetable soup, lean hamburger, lettuce, sliced tomato, angel food cake or fresh fruit salad, or perhaps a hamburger bun. If you are a coffee freak then some coffee or 1 cup of skimmed milk will be perfect.

Dinner: Well, dinner is again something resembling the earlier 2 meals. Dinner can include may be a cup of herbed rice, broccoli with low fat cheese sauce, hard dinner roll, a cup of carrot or raisin salad, some margarine and a cup or maximum 2 low fat, frozen strawberry yogurt.

That is how you can deal and attack the demons developed in your gall bladder, by avoiding excessive fat, having a low-fat diet. You can tackle with bladder problems by charting out different combination of gallbladder disease diets by opting for any of the enumerated foodstuffs which are permissible.

And ultimately, gall bladder disease or no gallbladder disease, a low fat diet works and is great for maintaining health and weight loss! What say!

By Medha Godbole
Published: 8/10/2009
 
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