Many people with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) are told to avoid ultra-processed foods and additives. Because many plant milks contain emulsifiers or stabilizers, this advice sometimes leads people to avoid dairy alternatives altogether.
But for people with IBD, eliminating plant milks can create another problem: low calcium intake, which increases the risk of bone loss.
I’ve written before about how eliminating entire food groups can sometimes create unintended consequences — including in my post on why going dairy-free isn’t always the best approach for IBD.
How many times have you heard this popular nutrition advice?
“If you can’t pronounce it, don’t eat it.”
Or:
“Choose foods with short ingredient lists.”
Both are meant to help people limit their intake of ultra-processed foods.
And as simple shortcuts, they can be helpful.
I know I’ve used both of them to guide patients toward less processed foods.
And in IBD, we’re seeing how shifting toward whole foods can improve symptoms, quality of life, and possibly even disease activity.
But sometimes the “hard-to-pronounce” ingredient is an essential nutrient.
And sometimes the shorter ingredient list… is a potato chip.
Let’s start with the first point.
Many people with IBD avoid dairy.
When choosing a plant-based milk, they often gravitate toward the version with the shortest ingredient list — no gums, no carrageenan, nothing you wouldn’t find in a home kitchen.
But those stabilizers often help make calcium fortification possible.
When calcium is added to plant milk, it can increase chalkiness, bitterness, and acidity, affecting the product’s texture and flavor.
Stabilizers help maintain texture, support a more balanced flavor, and keep the calcium evenly suspended throughout the product.
For example, with Califia Farms:
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The version without gums (left) contains almost no calcium.
The calcium-fortified version (right) — providing more calcium than a glass of cow’s milk — includes stabilizers.
If someone is dairy-free and also avoiding fortified foods because the ingredient list feels “too long” or the words look unfamiliar, meeting calcium needs becomes significantly harder.
Now for the second point.
A bag of potato chips — certainly considered an ultra-processed food — may contain just three ingredients: potatoes, oil, and salt.
All pronounceable.
All recognizable.
All ingredients many of us have at home.
That doesn’t make it nutrient-dense.
(It also doesn’t mean someone can’t enjoy a serving of chips as part of an overall healthy diet.)
Limiting ultra-processed foods is a reasonable goal — and one that often helps people with IBD feel better, especially when it leads to eating more whole foods.
But rules about pronounceability and ingredient length are screening tools.
They’re not final decision-makers, and there are always exceptions.
When we remove something — dairy, fortified foods, convenience products — it’s worth asking what that food was providing and whether we need a plan to replace it.
