Featured recipes
Welcome to chemical free chemist
Welcome to Chemical Free Chemist, a place where you can find recipes that cater for failsafe, low FODMAP, dairy free and wheat free diets; also known as my specific brand of ‘I can’t eat anything’. Most recipes are also gluten free. You should not choose to put yourself on these diets or you may risk nutritional deficiency, please only follow under the supervision of an experienced dietician.
You can find the recipes by selecting a category on the main menu: staples, main meals, meat dishes, sides, salads and dressings, baking and desserts and snacks, or from the list of all recipes.
The name
The Chemical Free Chemist comes from the frustration I have in being a chemist while on a diet often called a ‘low chemical’ diet. Chemicals and chemistry make up everything around us and everything we can eat. However some specific naturally occurring and synthetic chemicals used in food can cause an adverse reaction in some individuals, myself included. As a chemist, I can’t help adding that a pure (i.e. uncontaminated) chemical isolated from a natural product or a pure chemical synthesised in a lab are completely identical; chemicals are not ‘evil’ on their own, but the way they interact with our bodies can cause issues.
Acronyms and Definitions
- Failsafe Free of additive, low in salicylates, amines and flavour enhancers (see FedUp for a specific list)
- RPAH Royal Prince Alfred Hospital (Sydney, Australia). The RPAH Elimination Diet is also known as failsafe
- DF Dairy Free
- GF Gluten Free
- WF Wheat Free
- FODMAPs Fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides and polyols.
- Examples of oligosaccharides: fructans, galacto-oligosaccharides (GOS)
- Example of disaccharides: lactose
- Example of monosaccharides: fructose in excess of glucose
- Examples of polyols: sorbitol, mannitol, maltitol, xylitol, erythritol, lactitol, isomalt
Disclaimer
I am a chemist but not a dietician, and although I have researched well over the past two years there may be errors in the information on this blog. The information here is based on the RPAH Elimination Diet Handbook, The Monash University Low FODMAP App and the FODMAP Friendly App, as of February 2018. I aim to provide updated references so you can verify the information if you choose. The combination of these two diets should only be entered into under the supervision of an experienced dietician.
I will tread the line of high FODMAP foods in low FODMAP serves to provide variety and provide some moderate salicylate and moderate amine adaptions. Completely low RPAH elimination diet/failsafe with low FODMAP can be nutritionally deficient.
Apologies if you have problems with soy protein, eggs, a cashew allergy or other allergies/intolerances. Some of these recipes may be suitable but I try not to limit my diet (and hence recipes) more than necessary.
A roast dinner I cooked for friends – almost entirely low FODMAP and failsafe