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Ask two clinics what you can eat the days before a colonoscopy and you will not get the same list. One allows something the next one crosses out. That is a cause of real confusion, and it is not you misreading the form.
If you could chew it and swallow it without teeth, it is probably fine. Soft, no skins, no seeds.
The 4 sections below, one line each.
Each clinic sheet sets its own rules, and they conflict. One PDF may allow a food that another bans.
Low-residue and white-diet lists are written by different hospitals, in different years, for different scopes. Vegetarian and vegan versions of those lists disagree with each other too. A food is not “banned everywhere” because one PDF says so, and it is not safe everywhere because another PDF allows it.
What follows is how we think about the confusion, and how to look a food up yourself. This is generic advice and does not override any specific instructions from your doctor or clinic.
The no-teeth line is a rule of thumb, not a substitute for your doctor or clinic. Soft, no skins, no seeds, nothing you have to chew hard.
A fibre number doesn't tell you whether a food is low residue.
There is no Australian database that will tell you, in one number, whether a food is low residue. The Australian Food Composition Database reports total dietary fibre. Residue is not that number. Skins, seeds, gristle, and how the food is cooked are not in a fibre gram.
A white diet is often white bread, white rice, and other foods that are easy on the bowel and not always easy on blood glucose. We have not scored the twenty Sophie Hansen recipes for glycaemic index or glycaemic load. A homemade mixed dish is not one number on a database.
If you have diabetes, use the steps below, then check it against your own plan and your team. The cookbook does not replace that. Optional extras in the book are for whoever is not on the restricted diet.
Not on its own. glycemicindex.com is the University of Sydney GI database, and it gives GI values for individual tested foods, not recipes. Diabetes Australia explains what those numbers mean. No Australian database tells you, in one number, whether a food is low residue. If you have diabetes, look the food up, then check it against your own plan and your team.
Because residue isn't that number. The Australian Food Composition Database reports total dietary fibre, but skins, seeds, gristle, and how the food is cooked aren't in a fibre gram. So there's no Australian database that will tell you, in one number, whether a food is low residue.
A fibre gram doesn't capture it. Skins, seeds, gristle, and how the food is cooked aren't in that number, so a low fibre number on its own doesn't tell you a food is low residue.
The section Why is residue not the same as fibre? above explains that residue includes more than fibre numbers capture.
If you could chew it and swallow it without teeth, it's probably fine. Think soft, no skins, no seeds, nothing you have to chew hard. The no-teeth line is a rule of thumb, not a substitute for your doctor or clinic.
Because low-residue and white-diet lists are written by different hospitals, in different years, for different scopes. Vegetarian and vegan versions disagree with each other too. A food isn't "banned everywhere" because one PDF says so, and it isn't safe everywhere because another PDF allows it. This is generic advice and does not override any specific instructions from your doctor or clinic.
A white diet is often white bread, white rice, and other foods that are easy on the bowel and not always easy on blood glucose. Clinic sheets don't all describe it the same way. This is generic advice and does not override any specific instructions from your doctor or clinic.
How to look it up
The food-by-food lookup is the University of Sydney GI database.
What those numbers mean is explained by Diabetes Australia. A food with little or no carbohydrate cannot have a GI.
A clear fluid, a broth, or a mixed homemade meal will often not appear as a single tested food. That is a missing row, not a zero.