Colitis Foods

About this site

I am Jude Horak. I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis in August 2026, and this site is the food reference I went looking for in the first week and could not find: one page per food, a flare answer and a remission answer, the reason in plain English, and the medical sources right there on the page.

What I found instead was two kinds of pages. Big medical sites with a single generic list of foods to avoid, and forums where every food had ten people saying it was fine and ten people saying it wrecked them. Both are true in their way, and neither helps you decide what to eat for dinner tonight.

Why I built it this way

I build software for a living. When I got the diagnosis, the same instinct kicked in that kicks in on any messy problem: put the information in a structure where it cannot drift. So instead of writing a blog, I built a dataset. Every food on this site is a record with a flare verdict, a remission verdict, the mechanism behind them, preparation notes, safer swaps, and at least two citations. A validator refuses to publish any page that breaks those rules. The lists and trigger pages are generated from the same records, so a change to one food updates everywhere it appears.

The patient-voice sections are mine. I am learning this disease at the same time you are, and I would rather tell you how I actually decide about a bagel during a flare than pretend to be a clinic.

The rules every page follows

  • Every food page cites at least two sources from a fixed allowlist of medical organizations: the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation, NIH and NIDDK, peer-reviewed research on PubMed and PMC, academic medical centers, the NHS, Monash University, and the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. No blogs citing blogs. Across the site that is 60 distinct sources, each checked to still be live.
  • We say "usually" and "commonly" on purpose. UC triggers are individual, and any site that gives you absolutes is guessing.
  • No cures, no supplement sales, no miracle diets, no medication advice. Ever.
  • Every page shows when its sources were last checked. Verdicts change when the evidence does, and the date changes with them.
  • Where the research is thin, the page says so. A lot of food advice for UC is extrapolated from general IBD guidance, and you deserve to know which parts those are.

How pages are researched and written

Each food starts with the question people actually type into search engines, which I pull from the site's own search data. I then read what the allowlisted organizations say about that specific food, record the verdicts and the reasons, and write the page. I use software tools to help draft and to check every page against the rules above, and I edit for accuracy and for the voice of someone living with this. Recipes are built only from foods this site already rates as usually tolerated in the phase they are written for.

Today the site covers 125 foods, 37 recipes, and a set of guides for the situations a single food page cannot answer: the first weeks after diagnosis, the low-residue diet, reintroducing foods, eating out, and travel.

Who I am outside this

I run a small software company in Illinois, I am a military veteran, and my father is a physician, which is probably why I am comfortable reading research papers and equally comfortable saying that I am not a doctor. Nothing here is medical advice. Your gastroenterologist and a registered dietitian know your case; this site knows the food.

How the site makes money

Display advertising. That is the whole model. There are no affiliate links, no sponsored verdicts, no supplements, and no paid placements. Ads are served by a third-party network and I do not pick them, so if you ever see an ad for a miracle colitis cure, know that it got there despite this page, not because of it. The privacy policy explains the cookies that involves.

Corrections

Spot an error, a dead source, or a verdict you have good reason to disagree with? Email jude@everydaysoftware.ai or use the contact page. Corrections with a citation get fixed fastest. The full legal version of all of this is on the medical disclaimer page.