Okay, so i have had digestive issues. I found starches, lactose and sugar seemed to be a problem. So I looked into fodmap, specific carbohydrate, and paleo (hey, here I am). But the more I think about all these limitations, and the ideas, the more a confusing jumble of ideas it seems.

Bacteria can eat anything resembling a sugar (apparently they can also eat protein if need be, just not nealry as effeciently as sugar type foods). So fodmap has it sort of half covered, as far as the short chain simple ones go.

But then it completely ignores polysaccharides, the long chain carbs, like starch, and cellulose. Which equally break down into sugar. And which one has to admit, are much harder to digest, than some of the simple sugars.

And fodmap seems totally nebulous. Nobody is sure what contains what. Coconut used to be though to contain sorbitol, but aparrent the level is actually low. It may also contain fructans, but that also feeds alot of good bacteria, and tomatoes contain fructans, but they are usually on the "good" list. These nutrients are so obscure, that not enough solid nutrional data exists to even quantify what level most of them occur in various foods.

And bacteria can also efficiently eat soluble fibres (less so insoluble).

Then you have specific carbohydrate/maps, which instead of limiting all short chain sugars, limits some, and the hard to digest long chain ones...

Now, if one where to limit all of these foods, one would be left with very little left to eat, apart from meat. There would be a very very low level of carbs generally. (which is part of the point, but could cause health issues too).

It might be hard to get proper nutrition on both diets combined. Neither of them account for soluble fibre either. None of them suggest you use digestive enzymes to break the food down faster. Few of them have any gut healing protocol, like bone broth, or glutamine.

One is left with the feeling, that they are picking these ideas out of a hat. Now I definately benefit from having no added sugar, using low sugar fruits like berries, and having no high starch carbs. But then its somewhat of a balancing act to get that minimal level of carbs in that we need optimally. I have taken some advice from both diets, but I am also aware that if I followed all of there advise, id be eating next to nothing, it would be unhealthy, and much of it is really arbitrary.

And for weird reasons, some foods bother some people and not others (probably different speicies of bacteria, with different food differences). The only semi-universal uber sugar would seem to be lactose.

The specific carb diet lists glucose as bad because its a sugar. But its the most easily digestable sugar there is, it never makes it past the first two feet of your intestine, so its never going to feed any bacterial problems.

The whole thing seems like throwing grenades in the general vicinity of the enemy in the hopes one might hit.

So my question is - what in these two diets actually makes rational sense in terms of not feeding bacteria?

Monosaccharides? disaccharides? oligosaccharides? polysaccharides? polyols? Fructans?

Is it going to vary completely by bacterial species?

Whats going to be the worst out of these?

what doesn't make sense?

(they all seem to insist on un-sugar related things, like dont eat bacon because its got nitrates, or dont take stevia because its a steroid......seriously, your being a food nazi enough already, let us make those calls)

What advice in them is bad?

Severe carb restriction on some of these diets seems to be somewhat problematic, especially for atheletes. Not eating short chain sugars, and then allowing starches seems absurd to me.

Then theres the whole problem of hey, we need a few carbs here and there, what ones should we be eating? (I figure the ones that digest the fastest, like glucose does, which ever ones those are out of the list above...not sure)

Please give your thoughts on these "bacteria based" diets! (ive given some of mine).

The entire area is very confusing, often conflicting/contradicting, not evidence based at all, and probably in some ways unhealthy, so help us digestive impaired make sense of this mess!

Thanks :)