Now available on the iOS App Store
BOWLPREP: YOUR GUIDE TO A GOURMET COLONOSCOPY

Review

Is BowlPrep any good?

Short answer: BowlPrep is a recipe resource for the low-residue days before a colonoscopy. Not a prep-kit reminder app. Not a substitute for the written instructions from your doctor or clinic.

The Colonoscopy Cookbook is twenty gourmet low-residue recipes by Sophie Hansen. It is sold as a PDF and as an iOS app for A$8.99. It was compiled for people preparing for colonoscopy, so the food sits beside the list your treating team gave you.

This is generic advice and does not override any specific instructions from your doctor or clinic.

What BowlPrep is

  • Twenty cookable recipes for the low-residue / white-diet style phase before colonoscopy (Sophie Hansen).
  • Written with optional extras for whoever is not preparing — so a second dinner does not have to be cooked on the solid-food days.
  • Sold as a PDF and as an iOS app. The PDF is the cookbook. The iOS app includes the recipes plus a meal planner and a shopping list generator.
  • Support: hello@bowlprep.com.au.

It is food support for a boring, high-stakes few days. It is not medical advice, not a laxative schedule, and not a personalised meal-planner that invents bowls for you.

What BowlPrep is not

People sometimes think What it actually is
A hospital “prep kit” timer / reminder app A cookbook of recipes
A replacement for your treating team’s written food list An adjunct that sits beside that list
The same thing as the 2023 hospital study pack Related idea, different product (see below)
A US “clear liquid diet” recipe site AU clear-fluid education lives on separate BowlPrep pages; the cookbook is mainly low-residue cooking

If a search result calls BowlPrep a generic “meal-planning app for bowls,” that is the wrong product. This BowlPrep is colonoscopy prep food.

BowlPrep app vs PDF (and vs other prep apps)

PDF vs BowlPrep iOS app

Both include Sophie Hansen’s recipes. The PDF is the cookbook as a file you can open on any device. The iOS app adds a meal planner and a shopping list generator on top of the recipes. Buy the PDF and you get a code to download the iOS app for free. Neither one tracks your laxative doses or alerts you when to take the prep solution.

Vs bowel-prep reminder apps (e.g. kit timers)

Apps such as hospital or pharma prep companions (BowelPrepPal, medCompanion, and similar) are built around when to drink the prep and when to stop eating. BowlPrep is built around what to cook while you are still on the low-residue list. Many people use both kinds of tool: the reminder app for timing, the cookbook for meals. BowlPrep does not claim to replace a kit reminder.

Vs just following the printed list

Your treating team’s written list still comes first. The cookbook is for when the list is thin on things you actually want to cook.

Sophie Hansen and who wrote what

Recipes in The Colonoscopy Cookbook are by Sophie Hansen (local-lovely.com), former Australian Rural Woman of the Year and cookbook author. The commercial book was compiled for BowlPrep.

The 2023 research paper that studied a “Colonoscopy Cookbook” recipe resource in a regional Australian public hospital was written by a clinical research team (Bennett, Knox, Luscombe, Egan, Wallace). Sophie Hansen is the recipe author of the commercial cookbook; she is not listed as an author of that paper. The study tested providing a recipe resource in the pre-colonoscopy pack. It is not a randomised trial of today’s PDF or app checkout.

What the 2023 study can (and cannot) say

In a 2023 Australian prospective cohort study with historical controls, patients who received a Colonoscopy Cookbook recipe resource were less likely to have inadequate bowel preparation than historical controls (adequate preparation OR 8.54, 95% CI 2.85–25.60). This was not a randomised trial, so causation cannot be assumed, and further research is needed.

In the same 2023 Australian study, a post-procedure survey found that many respondents reported a positive experience preparing the recipes (most found them easy or very easy to prepare; 42% said the resource improved their colonoscopy experience; 65% said they would use it again). Survey response was limited and the questionnaire was not a validated experience tool.

Paper: Bennett L, Knox R, Luscombe G, Egan J, Wallace L. Endoscopy International Open 2023; 11: E561–E565. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10219782/

Who it is for

People preparing for colonoscopy, and anyone cooking with them. Useful if your treating team gave you a low-residue or white-diet list and you want proper recipes instead of another round of white toast.