According to the following citation and now many subsequent papers, FODMAPs containing foodstuffs are a viable treatment option for a variety of prolems originating in your gut:
Personal view: food for thought–western lifestyle and susceptibility to Crohn's disease. The FODMAP hypothesis:
The association of Crohn's disease with westernization has implicated lifestyle factors in pathogenesis. While diet is a likely candidate, evidence for specific changes in dietary habits and/or intake has been lacking. A new hypothesis is proposed, by which excessive delivery of highly fermentable but poorly absorbed short-chain carbohydrates and polyols (designated FODMAPs--Fermentable Oligo-, Di- and Mono-saccharides And Polyols) to the distal small intestinal and colonic lumen is a dietary factor underlying susceptibility to Crohn's disease. The subsequent rapid fermentation of FODMAPs in the distal small and proximal large intestine induces conditions in the bowel that lead to increased intestinal permeability, a predisposing factor to the development of Crohn's disease. Evidence supporting this hypothesis includes the increasing intake of FODMAPs in western societies, the association of increased intake of sugars in the development of Crohn's disease, and the previously documented effects of the ingestion of excessive FODMAPs on the bowel. This hypothesis provides potential for the design of preventive strategies and raises concern about current enthusiasm for putative health-promoting effects of FODMAPs. One of the greatest challenges in defining the pathogenesis of Crohn's disease is to identify predisposing environmental factors. Such an achievement might lead to the development of preventive strategies for, and the definition of, possible target for changing the natural history of this serious disease.
While the evidence is mounting that this a indeed an interesting treatment option, it looks like an either very counter-intuitive or even contrafactual or contradictory logic to other received wisdom about nutrition. A healthy gut is populated with a very diverse microbiome and that microbiome is fostered on a diet rich in fibre and probiotics, prebiotics, including the FODMAPs.
Given that FODMAP-lists frequently do not contain not only a list of ready made convenience products, industrially enriched with said substances, but a long list of natural foods containing various amounts of the FODMAPs, it conflicts with the advice to supposedly generally improve a typical western diet with more fibre and prebiotics.
While it is obviously not very advisable at all to follow these restrictions if you are healthy just because gluten-free is so last year and you are in dire need for a new fad, I still wonder if the whole concept is indeed viable, despite the evidence. Even in strictly prescribed diets it is simply not feasible to apply all these restrictions long term and not even called for.
Finding papers criticising 'low-FODMAP’ is not hard, but I struggle to find the theoretical concept behind the actual positive evidence criticised in a paper that is also providing alternatives in comparable evidence level of never reducing prebiotic FODMAPs (in populations that seem to be in the benefitting target audience).
In short: Is the FODMAP hypothesis providing red-herring quality evidence or how do we reconcile the two positions of increasing prebiotic intake with lowering FODMAP intake.