Resources
Low residue snacks before a colonoscopy
Your clinic's written list comes first. This page sits beside it with snack ideas, not a second list.
The long part of prep is often not the meal. It's three o'clock, you're hungry, and the list in your hand looks short. A snack on the solid-food days is just a small plate from that same list. Plain. Low in fibre. Nothing with seeds, skins, or nuts, which is what clinic sheets usually take off.
What counts as a low-residue snack
Not a protocol, and not a second food list.
On the days you're still eating solid food, a low-residue snack is usually something already in the pantry, made the plain way: white toast or a white roll; yoghurt; plain white crackers or seed-free rice cakes; soft peeled fruit; a boiled or poached egg; soft cheese; a little leftover lean chicken or white fish. Those are the snack types already set out on What can I eat the days before a colonoscopy?.
Seeds, nuts, and the peels and skins of fruit and vegetables are the usual exclusions on these sheets, because they're the bits that linger. BowlPrep doesn't publish a national allow-or-avoid chart.
Clear fluids are a different phase. They're not a swap for a solids-day snack. When your clinic moves you onto clear fluids, the solid snacks stop.
Snack ideas from the cookbook
Sophie Hansen wrote the recipes in The Colonoscopy Cookbook for the low-residue / white-diet days. A recipe resource can help people stick to the list their clinic already gave them. The ideas below are from that commercial cookbook, not the handout used in the hospital study.
Most of the methods live in the book. Where a page exists, it's linked. Optional extras in the book are for whoever isn't preparing, and the person preparing leaves them out.
On the solid-food days
- Lemon ricotta hotcakes with rockmelon balls. A light breakfast in the book, and a small sweet plate later in the day if you'd rather not sit down to another full meal. You'll find the whole method on that page.
- Pikelets. The sample meal plan puts them on a morning when solids are still allowed. In the book they are cinnamon sugar pikelets, the ones you cook a few at a time for breakfast or afternoon tea. The method is in the book. There's no separate pikelets page on the site.
- French toast with poached pears. Breakfast on the sample plan. One slice makes a fair between-meal plate. Method in the book.
- Filo egg and bacon pies. Lunch on the sample plan. One pie is enough for a snack. Method in the book.
- Simple fish cakes. Written as a lunch or dinner, and small enough to eat as a snack. Method in the book.
The plainer pantry snacks above — toast, yoghurt, a cracker, an egg — are there for the hours you don't want to cook.
Once the sheet says clear fluids
Solids stop, including the pies, the pikelets, and the toast. For that window, see Clear fluid recipes before a colonoscopy. Your clinic's hours decide when it starts. Within 6 hours of anaesthetic or sedation, no jelly, gelatin, or egg white — even if a clinic allows jelly earlier in the clear-fluid window. If in doubt check with your anaesthetist.
- Fresh orange jellies. A clear-fluid recipe from the book.
- Lemon sorbet. Named on the clear-fluid page as something you can see through.
- Roasted vegetable broth. A cup to sip in the clear-fluid window, strained so it stays clear. It isn't a solids-day snack. Full recipe for free.
If you want the methods
The Colonoscopy Cookbook is twenty recipes by Sophie Hansen, compiled for people on a low-residue / white diet before a colonoscopy. It's A$8.99 each as a PDF from bowlprep.com.au, or in the iOS app and Android app, if you want the rest of the methods rather than another list.