I manually add my own maltodextrin to my protein shakes, maybe that's something I should stop....
How do you track a trigger food? I've only had one flare due to being newly affected - but it came on very slowly over a year, there's no way I'd be able to focus down to one food or even several. Is it only possible when a flare erupts quickly?
I've stopped eating gluten as prior to diagnosis i suspected i might have just become coeliac - but when i reintroduce it I get sores in my mouth and nerve issues. So if i enter remission would you advise keeping away from it permanently? I thought potentially i was just incapable of having it temporarily whilst my small intestine was weakened (gluten getting through the membrane undigested or something) and i would be fine in a few months - but i absolutely wont have it if it will bring about a flare.
I would suggest not adding it because it's not very healthy to begin with, IBD or not. I might go so far as to say table sugar is safer.
If you have coeliac there's not much you can do to reverse it as far as medical science is currently aware, I would not suggest cheating on a gluten free diet with coeliac as it increases cancer risk and risk of permanent damage to the intestinal villi.
If you have a trigger food you will know, you may not have any right now, and going forward hopefully you never will
The best way to ensure a health gut microbiome that will be able to digest a diverse array of foods for years to come is to eat a diet rich in a diverse number of fibers. You want a minimum of 20 grams of fiber a day, but 40 would be ideal.
This will help promote health bacteria in the gut and crowd out dangerous ones associated with crohn's and crohn's complications.
Avoid taking antibiotics unless it's 100% necessary. These do the greatest harm to commensal gut bacteria and some, like doxicycline, are linked to crohn's.
Probiotic rich fermented foods like kefir, sauerkraut, kimchi, kombucha etc. are also advisable. I don't think a probiotic supplement is necessary for anyone with a healthy diet, since they tend to be bad monetary investment compared to food.
You'll see a lot of people talk about 'soft' vs 'hard' foods and I really don't believe that effects you unless you already have inflammation. What triggers a flare is chemistry, not texture. It's the alkaloids in nightshades for some, the sugar alcohols in candy for others, the gluten in grains, etc. etc.
If potatoes are a trigger food they will still be a trigger food, boiled, mashed, or as chips. If they are just something you struggle to digest because of an advanced disease state, then the consistency might effect it, and that's how you can tell the difference between a trigger food and a food that's difficult to digest.
For people with inflammation, fiber will be difficult to digest so they'll typically avoid it, which is problematic because it's also the best ally in restoring healthy gun bacteria populations.
Once a gut bacteria population is dead the only way to repopulate it is a transplant but they're still not medically approved for Crohn's and still have a low success rate because of confounding factors.