In the past year or so you might be hearing these acronyms - SCD, GAPS, Paleo, GF, & DF.

But what do they stand for and what do they mean to you?

SCD

Stands for the Specific Carbohydrate Diet which excludes from the diet all grains, oats, certain legumes, all gluten, soy, and mucilaginous foods to help allow the gut to heal and eliminate inflammation. 

The diet is explained in very good detail in Elaine Gottschall's book, Breaking the Vicious Cycle - http://www.breakingtheviciouscycle.info/home/.The book and the website give a thorough list of foods that are allowed and not allowed.

It is a diet based on the original one developed by Dr. Sidney V. Haas from New York City. According to Gottschall's book's introduction, "Dr. Haas had developed his nutritional approach to intestinal healing over a long, illustrious career, and wrote a textbook, which could be found in nearly every medical library in the world. His colleagues, however - unschooled in nutrition and dismissive of its importance in maintaining health - had abandoned his work in pursuit of new versions of the same standard drugs and of increasingly complex surgical procedures.

Elaine took the study of his diet even further to help her young daughter who was diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis. The diet proved to help successfully treat Elain's daughter illness and over the years many other IBDers have found success in the diet as well.

I, myself, have been eating according to the SCD diet for more than a year now and am in the best health since my IBD diagnosis more than 14 years ago. That said, the diet takes time and effort to follow and you have to be dedicated to healing your body through the food that you make and eat.

GAPS

Many parts of the SCD diet overlap the GAPS diet. That said, GAPS followers will tell you that while SCD is a *diet* GAPS is a *lifestyle* that includes 1. diet - which is almost identical to SCD; 2. detox; and, 3. supplementation - http://gapsdiet.com/

Diet-wise, the main differences in GAPS vs. SCD are as follow:

- GAPS strongly recommends daily ingestion of homemade broth and fermented foods.

- GAPS strongly suggests removing dairy products from the diet for 1 month then slowly reintroducing them and eliminating them altogether if symptoms arise.

- the types of legumes allowed on GAPS is more limited than those allowed on SCD.

- Sea vegetables (i.e sea weed) and pure cocoa are allowed on GAPS whereas neither are allowed on SCD.

There are those who see SCD as more strict or, as some say, radical. While GAPS is described as a list of recommendations that should be tailored to each person's needs.

Paleo:

This diet is what I call a lifestyle choice. I'm sure there are plenty of people who will disagree with me on this and tell me that the diet has been shown to improve overall health and specific illnesses. I don't deny that this could be true.

On the Paleo diet website - http://thepaleodiet.com/about/ - it is described as "the world’s healthiest diet, based upon the fundamental concept that the optimal diet is the one to which we are genetically adapted. The therapeutic effect of the Paleo Diet is supported by both randomized controlled human trials and real-life success stories."