High FODMAP foods include many everyday staples: wheat bread, onions, garlic, apples, milk, beans, and stone fruits like peaches and cherries. FODMAPs are short-chain carbohydrates that your small intestine absorbs poorly. They pass through to your large intestine, where gut bacteria ferment them and produce gases like hydrogen and methane. These foods also pull water into the intestine through osmotic effects, which can cause bloating, cramping, diarrhea, and gas, particularly in people with irritable bowel syndrome.
Not everyone reacts to every FODMAP category. There are five main groups, and knowing which foods fall into each one helps you identify your personal triggers rather than cutting out everything at once.
Fructans: Wheat, Onions, and Garlic
Fructans are chains of fructose molecules that humans lack the enzyme to break down, so they always reach the large intestine undigested. This category trips up more people than any other because the foods are so common in everyday cooking.
The biggest fructan sources are onions, garlic, and wheat. Shallots, leeks, asparagus, artichokes, beets, Brussels sprouts, savoy cabbage, fennel, and snow peas also contain significant amounts. Among grains, wheat is the primary offender, but spelt, rye, and barley are high in fructans too. That means regular bread, pasta, crackers, and most baked goods are high FODMAP by default.
Inulin, sometimes listed as chicory root or chicory root extract, is a concentrated fructan added to many packaged foods as a fiber supplement. You’ll find it in protein bars, high-fiber cereals, and some yogurts. Fructo-oligosaccharides (FOS) are another added fructan that shows up on ingredient labels. These hidden sources can catch you off guard even when the whole food in a product seems safe.
Excess Fructose: Certain Fruits and Sweeteners
Fructose becomes a problem when a food contains more fructose than glucose. Your intestine absorbs fructose more efficiently when glucose is present in equal or greater amounts, essentially piggy-backing on glucose absorption. When fructose exceeds glucose, the surplus sits in the gut and ferments.
Fruits high in excess fructose include apples, pears, mangoes, watermelon, grapes, cherries, and lychee. Dried fruits like raisins, dates, and prunes concentrate fructose further. Fruit juice of any kind tends to be high FODMAP because the sugar is extracted without the fiber. To illustrate how the ratio matters: bananas and mangoes contain similar amounts of fructose, but mangoes have less glucose to balance it out, so they tend to cause more problems.
Sweeteners are another major source. Honey, agave syrup, high fructose corn syrup, molasses, and palm sugar all deliver excess fructose. These appear in sauces, marinades, salad dressings, and flavored drinks, so checking labels matters.
Lactose: Milk and Soft Dairy Products
Lactose is the sugar in dairy, and it becomes a FODMAP issue when your body doesn’t produce enough lactase to break it down. The highest lactose foods are cow’s milk, goat’s milk, evaporated milk, ice cream, and soft fresh cheeses like ricotta and cottage cheese.
Not all dairy is equally problematic. Aged cheeses like cheddar, Swiss, and Parmesan contain less than 1 gram of lactose per serving because bacteria consume the lactose during the aging process. Butter is also very low in lactose. Greek yogurt, while not lactose-free, contains less lactose than regular yogurt because the straining process removes some of the whey where lactose concentrates.
GOS: Beans, Lentils, and Pulses
Galacto-oligosaccharides (GOS) are found primarily in legumes. Chickpeas, kidney beans, black beans, lentils, and split peas are all high in this FODMAP type. Cashews and pistachios also contain notable amounts, which surprises people who think of nuts as safe across the board.
Some soy products fall into this category too, particularly those made from whole soybeans like soy milk made from the bean itself (as opposed to soy protein isolate, which is lower in GOS).
One practical detail worth knowing: GOS dissolves in water. Canned legumes that have been drained and rinsed are lower in FODMAPs than freshly cooked ones because some of the GOS leaches out into the canning liquid. Boiling dried beans and discarding the cooking water has a similar effect. This won’t eliminate GOS entirely, but it can bring a serving below the threshold that triggers symptoms.
Polyols: Stone Fruits and Sugar Alcohols
Polyols include sorbitol and mannitol, which are naturally present in certain fruits and vegetables. Stone fruits are the classic high-polyol foods: peaches, plums, nectarines, apricots, and cherries all contain sorbitol. Avocados are very high in sorbitol, which often surprises people given their reputation as a health food. Mushrooms and cauliflower are the main vegetable sources of mannitol.
The other major polyol source is sugar-free products. Xylitol, maltitol, isomalt, and sorbitol are used as sweeteners in sugar-free gum, mints, candies, and products marketed to diabetics. Even small amounts of these sweeteners can cause digestive issues because they’re poorly absorbed by design.
Hidden FODMAPs in Packaged Foods
Processed and packaged foods often contain high FODMAP ingredients that aren’t obvious from the product name. Onion powder and garlic powder are used in seasoning blends, stocks, soups, sauces, and ready meals. Because they’re dehydrated, the FODMAP content is actually more concentrated per gram than fresh onion or garlic.
Other ingredients to watch for on labels include inulin, chicory root fiber, FOS, agave syrup, high fructose corn syrup, honey, apple juice concentrate (used as a sweetener), and any of the sugar alcohols ending in “-ol.” Many high-fiber or high-protein snack products add inulin or chicory root to boost their fiber numbers, turning an otherwise safe product into a FODMAP bomb.
How FODMAP Stacking Works
A food doesn’t have to be high FODMAP on its own to cause problems. FODMAP stacking happens when you eat several low FODMAP foods in one meal that each contain small amounts of the same FODMAP type. Individually, each food might be fine, but together they push the total FODMAP load past your tolerance threshold.
For example, a meal with a small serving of wheat pasta, a few slices of beet, and a garnish of spring onion greens might combine enough fructans to trigger symptoms, even though each food tested low on its own. This is why spacing meals 2 to 3 hours apart helps. It gives your gut time to process one FODMAP load before the next one arrives.
Stacking is worth paying attention to if you’ve been eating only low FODMAP foods but still notice symptoms. It’s less of a concern during everyday eating if your gut handles a standard low FODMAP diet without trouble.
Quick Reference by FODMAP Type
- Fructans: wheat, rye, barley, onions, garlic, shallots, leeks, artichokes, asparagus, Brussels sprouts, chicory root, inulin
- Excess fructose: apples, pears, mangoes, watermelon, cherries, grapes, dried fruit, honey, agave, high fructose corn syrup
- Lactose: cow’s milk, goat’s milk, ice cream, soft cheeses (ricotta, cottage cheese), regular yogurt
- GOS: chickpeas, kidney beans, black beans, lentils, split peas, cashews, pistachios, soy milk (from whole beans)
- Polyols: peaches, plums, nectarines, cherries, avocados, mushrooms, cauliflower, sugar-free gum and candy (xylitol, sorbitol, maltitol, isomalt)
The Monash University FODMAP app remains the most reliable and regularly updated database for checking individual foods. Their team retests foods and updates classifications on an ongoing basis, with major reviews of vegetable, meat, and fat categories completed in 2024 and 2025. Serving size matters as much as food choice, since many foods shift from low to high FODMAP as the portion increases.