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WHEN YOUR GUT IS STRUGGLING, EVEN A SIMPLE QUESTION CAN FEEL OVERWHELMING:
What Can I Eat Right Now?
A practical food Progression designed to help you understand where to start, how to prepare foods, and what to try next—while paying attention to your own tolerance.
You need a starting point—and a path forward.
SEE WHAT'S INSIDE
What If Choosing Food Felt Less Like Guesswork?
When digestion becomes unpredictable, food advice can create more questions than answers.
You may know which foods appear on a list—but still not know:
• Where should I begin?
• Does preparation matter?
• Should this food be cooked, peeled, puréed or eaten in another form?
• When might I be ready to try something more?
• What happens if a food doesn’t work for me right now?
Knowing the name of a food isn't always enough.
Food in the Making looks beyond a simple list of foods and considers where you start, how foods are prepared, and how food choices can expand over time according to individual tolerance.
Instead of asking only “Can I eat this?” you begin asking a more useful question: “Where does this fit for me right now?”
You Shouldn't Have to Be Afraid of Food to Make Thoughtful Choices About What You Eat
When your gut is unpredictable, the goal isn't a "perfect" diet.
It's having enough direction to make your next choice feel a little less uncertain.
A MORE PRACTICAL WAY TO THINK ABOUT FOOD
Start. Prepare. Expand.
Food in the Making organizes many of the decisions around food into three practical ideas.
START → PREPARE → EXPAND
START
Find your starting point.
PREPARE
Food + form matter.
EXPAND
Build variety as tolerated.
| START
FIND YOUR STARTING POINT
Begin from a defined starting point rather than trying to sort through an overwhelming list of possibilities.
| PREPARE
FOOD + FORM MATTER
Pay attention not only to the food itself, but to its form—how it is cooked, peeled, puréed, blended, or otherwise prepared.
| EXPAND
BUILD VARIETY AS TOLERATED
Gradually explore greater variety, preparation and texture as tolerated.
Consistency defines the framework. Tolerance determines the pace.
Strict About the Framework. Individual About the Progression.
THE FOOD FRAMEWORK
Follow it consistently.
Foods and ingredients outside the framework remain outside the framework.
YOUR PROGRESSION
Move at your own pace.
Your individual response helps determine how long you remain at a particular point and when you are ready to explore what comes next.
Why Begin With a Defined Starting Point?
The idea of beginning with a deliberately limited diet isn't new.
Dr. Sidney Haas's historical dietary protocol began with a carefully defined starting point rather than immediately introducing a wide variety of foods.
As the patient's condition stabilized, foods were introduced cautiously, and the response was observed before proceeding further.
That principle is foundational to Food in the Making:
Stabilize first. Then proceed cautiously.
The Intro / Basic Diet establishes the starting point.
From there, the Food in the Making Progression provides a structured way to expand food choices while allowing individual tolerance to determine the pace.
The exact foods, preparations, and Progression are laid out inside the guide.
THE THINKING BEHIND THE FRAMEWORK DIDN'T BEGIN YESTERDAY
This Approach Has a History.
Food in the Making didn't begin by inventing another list of “gut-friendly” foods.
Its roots extend through nearly a century of dietary thinking—from the clinical work of Drs. Sidney and Merrill Haas, through Elaine Gottschall's continuation of the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, to modern research examining SCD in inflammatory bowel disease.
- 11920s–1950s
DRS. SIDNEY & MERRILL HAAS - Clinical dietary work and development of the Specific Carbohydrate Diet - 21980s–1990s
ELAINE GOTTSCHALL - Continued the approach and developed a more detailed hypothesis about carbohydrate digestion and the intestinal environment - 3TODAY
MODERN SCD RESEARCH - Researchers continue to investigate the Specific Carbohydrate Diet in Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, including its effects on symptoms, inflammation, nutrition, and the microbiome. - 4FOOD IN THE MAKING
Historical foundations + modern evidence + lived experience + practical food implementation
What Does the Research Show?
Modern researchers have begun studying the Specific Carbohydrate Diet in people with inflammatory bowel disease.
Studying an entire dietary protocol presents challenges that drug trials don't face. Foods are difficult to blind, adherence can be difficult to verify, and tightly controlling what participants eat over extended periods is complex.
At the same time, clinical and observational research has reported meaningful improvements in symptoms, disease activity and inflammatory markers in some participants.
The evidence is still developing.
Food in the Making doesn't present historical reports, modern research or personal experiences as guarantees of what will happen for any individual.
Instead, they help explain why this dietary approach continues to be studied—and why implementation deserves more attention than a simple list of foods.
HISTORICAL CLINICAL REPORTS
HAAS & HAAS
603 Children Treated by Diet
In their analysis of 603 children with celiac disease treated by diet, Haas and Haas reported results for 370 cases they had followed long enough to draw conclusions.
Of those 370 cases:
270 (73%) were classified as “cured”
89 (24%) were still under treatment and described as “on the road to cure”
8 (2.2%) were classified as not cured
3 (0.8%) died from illnesses reported as unrelated to the underlying gastrointestinal disease
Haas and Haas defined “cured” as being able to tolerate a full normal diet at the end of three years.
Importantly, Haas recognized that “celiac disease” was being used much more broadly than the condition defined by that name today. His clinical observations led him to distinguish among different underlying conditions and presentations within the children then being grouped under the celiac diagnosis.
These results came from an extended historical clinical case series—not a modern randomized controlled trial—and should be understood within that historical diagnostic context.
MODERN SCD STUDIES
Small Studies. Meaningful Signals.
Modern SCD studies remain relatively small, but several have reported meaningful improvements in symptoms, clinical disease activity and inflammatory markers in people with IBD.
Studying an entire dietary protocol presents challenges that drug trials don't face. Foods are difficult to blind, adherence is difficult to verify, and maintaining a tightly controlled diet over longer periods can be costly and impractical.
The evidence is still developing—but the findings have been significant enough to support continued clinical research into dietary therapy for IBD.
PEDIATRIC IBD RESEARCH & CARE
Dr. David Suskind
At Seattle Children’s, pediatric gastroenterologist and Clinical Nutrition Medical Director Dr. David Suskind has helped bring the Specific Carbohydrate Diet from research into real-world pediatric IBD care.
His work includes treating children with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, studying the SCD’s effects on disease activity and the microbiome, and helping families learn how to implement dietary therapy in everyday life—including hands-on food education.
At Seattle Children’s, nutritional therapy isn't simply being studied. It is part of pediatric IBD care.
Cheryl Cich
Creator of The Ultimate Gut-Friendly Grocery Guide
I Remember Thinking, “What Do I Have to Lose?”
I wasn’t looking for another diet.
I was getting sicker, and the medications I had relied on were no longer giving me the stability I desperately wanted.
Then I found Elaine Gottschall’s Breaking the Vicious Cycle.
I learned about Dr. Sidney Haas and the clinical work that came before it. And I did what many people do when they’re frightened and trying to decide whether something this demanding is really worth trying:
I read everything I could find.
I read the book. I researched the diet. And I read review after review from people who had actually followed the Specific Carbohydrate Diet and described what happened to them.
Those stories weren’t clinical trials. They couldn’t tell me what would happen to me.
But together with the history behind the diet, they gave me enough reason to think:
What do I have to lose?
So I committed to it.
Not mostly. Not with cheat days. I followed the diet strictly.
And something about the approach made intuitive sense to me:
Simplify first. Create stability. Then proceed cautiously.
That became the way I learned to navigate food.
Over time—and while working with my medical care team—I was able to taper off the medications I had been taking. Two years into the diet, a follow-up colonoscopy was normal, and I went on to experience more than a decade without IBD medication.
That is my experience. It isn't a promise of what this approach will do for someone else.
But it left me with a question I haven't been able to let go:
If this approach helped me—and so many other people have reported meaningful experiences with it—how can we make it easier for someone else to actually understand and follow?
That question became Food in the Making.
And it is why I created the Ultimate Gut-Friendly Grocery Guide.
A PRACTICAL GUIDE FOR THE QUESTION YOU'VE BEEN ASKING
The Ultimate Gut-Friendly Grocery Guide
294 pages designed to help take you from “What can I eat?” to “I know what I can try next.”
The Ultimate Gut-Friendly Grocery Guide brings the food framework, Progression, preparation guidance and everyday implementation together in one place.
Instead of searching one food at a time—or trying to remember dozens of disconnected rules—you can see where foods fit, find the guidance you need, and understand what to consider as you're ready to move forward.
This isn't simply a book to read. It's a reference designed to be used.
Take a Look Inside.
Inside the guide, food guidance becomes visual and practical—so you can find the information you need without starting another internet search every time a question comes up.
You Don’t Have to Read 294 Pages Before You Start.
This guide was designed to be used, not memorized.
I need to know what to eat right now.
Begin with the Intro / Basic Diet and your starting guidance.
I'm ready to add more foods.
Use the Progression and Stage references to see what comes next and find the guidance you need to move forward.
I'm planning meals or going grocery shopping.
Jump directly to the food, ingredient, label, or reference section you need.
Start where you are. Use what you need. Come back whenever you're ready for the next step.
This Guide May Be a Good Fit If...
THIS MAY BE FOR YOU IF:
THIS MAY NOT BE FOR YOU IF:
The guide gives you a map. Your body helps determine the pace.
Everything You Need to Navigate Food With More Confidence—in One Guide
You Don’t Have to Keep Guessing What to Eat.
When your digestion is unpredictable, even ordinary food decisions can become exhausting.
The Ultimate Gut-Friendly Grocery Guide gives you a structured resource to return to when you’re wondering where to begin, what to consider next, or how a food fits within the framework.
Start with the question that brought you here:
“What can I eat right now?”
Then come back to the guide whenever you’re ready for what comes next.
294-PAGE DIGITAL GUIDE
$59 • IMMEDIATE ACCESS
GET THE ULTIMATE GUT-FRIENDLY GROCERY GUIDE
Immediate digital access after purchase. Secure payment.
Frequently Asked Questions
No. The guide was created from Cheryl’s lived experience with inflammatory bowel disease, but the food and preparation framework is not limited to one diagnosis. It is designed for adults looking for a more organized way to navigate food when digestion is sensitive.
It is educational and is not a substitute for individualized medical or nutrition care.
The foods and ingredients that make up the framework are intended to be followed consistently. What varies is the pace of progression.
The Stages organize foods and preparations into a practical Progression, but they are not a race or a rigid timetable. Your individual response helps determine how long you remain at a particular point and when you are ready to explore what comes next.
Consistency defines the framework. Tolerance determines the pace.
The Food in the Making approach does restrict foods and ingredients outside the framework, but its purpose isn't simply to create a longer list of foods to avoid.
It begins with a defined starting point and provides a structured Progression for navigating food choices from there, while allowing individual tolerance to determine the pace.
No. No guide can determine your individual medical or nutritional needs.
Instead, the guide provides a structured framework and practical food guidance you can use while paying attention to your own tolerance and individual needs.
Individual tolerance always matters. A food's place within the framework doesn't mean every person will tolerate it at that point—or at all.
If a food doesn't work for you, the guide is designed to help you continue using the framework while paying attention to your individual response.
The Intro / Basic Diet establishes the starting point for the Food in the Making Progression. The guide explains how it fits within the overall framework, along with important guidance about individual tolerance and when medical or nutrition support may be appropriate.
The Food in the Making framework is rooted in the dietary work of Dr. Sidney Haas and the Specific Carbohydrate Diet later brought to a wider audience by Elaine Gottschall in Breaking the Vicious Cycle.
Food in the Making builds on that foundation by organizing the food guidance into a practical Progression designed to make the approach easier to understand, navigate and use in everyday life.
The guide explains that history and framework while giving you the practical tools to put it into practice.
No. This is a food and implementation reference rather than a prescribed daily meal plan.
It gives you the framework, food guidance and practical tools you need to make your own food choices within the Progression.
You’ll receive immediate digital access to the 294-page Ultimate Gut-Friendly Grocery Guide in PDF format, so you can save it to your device and return to it whenever you need it.
No. The Ultimate Gut-Friendly Grocery Guide is an educational food and implementation resource. It isn't medical care and isn't intended to diagnose, treat, or cure a medical condition.
If you have a diagnosed digestive disease, significant symptoms, or concerns about meeting your nutritional needs, use the guide alongside appropriate medical or nutrition care.
You Don’t Have to Keep Starting the Research All Over Again.
When another food question comes up, you’ll have one comprehensive resource to return to—so you can find the guidance you need without piecing everything together again.
294-PAGE DIGITAL PDF • $59 • IMMEDIATE ACCESS
GET THE ULTIMATE GUT-FRIENDLY GROCERY GUIDE
Copyright - Food in the Making