Monash University FODMAP diet

Review by eFreeware

If you have been told to try a low FODMAP diet for irritable bowel syndrome, the hard part is rarely the idea itself. It is working out which foods are safe, in what amounts, and how to tell whether the diet is helping. This app comes from the Monash University research team that developed the diet, and it is built as a reference and tracking tool for exactly that job.

It is a paid app, $9.00, with no advertising and no in-app purchases, and it has been on Google Play since November 2013. The install base is substantial for a medical reference, over 500,000, and the average rating sits at 4.2 from 4,891 ratings. That combination tells you something useful: this is a long-running tool with a large audience, not a novelty.

What it gives you is a structured way to follow a three-step diet, from cutting high FODMAP foods through to reintroducing them, with the food data and the diary kept in the same place. If you are starting the diet, or restarting it after a break, that structure is the main reason to consider it.

The food guide is the core of it

The feature the developer leads with is a Food Guide covering hundreds of foods, each rated for FODMAP content through a traffic light system. That approach is easy to read at a glance, which matters when you are standing in a grocery store trying to decide between two similar products.

The traffic light framing also handles the awkward part of FODMAP eating: portion size. A food is not simply allowed or banned, and a color-coded guide can show that a food moves from green to amber depending on how much of it you eat. I would expect this to be the screen most people open most often.

Alongside the general food data there is a list of branded products that Monash has certified as low FODMAP. That is a different kind of help. Instead of guessing whether a specific item on a shelf fits the diet, you can check whether it has been through the certification process.

Together these two parts cover the question that comes up constantly on a low FODMAP diet: is this particular thing, in this particular amount, something I should eat right now.

Recipes, lists and a symptom diary

Over 70 low FODMAP recipes are included as well. That is a reasonable size for a recipe set, and it matters because the diet can quickly narrow your cooking options. Having a bank of meals that already fit the plan saves you from adapting ordinary recipes and hoping for the best.

Beyond food data, there are tools for organizing your own diet. You can build a shopping list inside the app and attach notes to individual foods. Both are small features, but they turn the app from a lookup table into something closer to a working notebook.

The Diary is the other substantial piece. Tracking also covers symptoms, bowel habits and stress. The developer also describes it as guiding you through step 2 of the diet, the FODMAP reintroduction phase, which is the stage where you test foods back in and watch for reactions.

That combination is sensible. A food guide tells you what should be safe; a diary tells you what actually happened when you ate it. For anyone working through reintroduction, the diary is likely to be the part that produces the most useful information about their own triggers.

What it asks of you

This is a paid app at $9.00, and there are no ads and no in-app purchases to navigate around. The cost is upfront, which for a medical reference is a straightforward arrangement: you pay once and use it.

It also asks for effort. The diet itself has three steps, and the app is organized around walking you through them rather than handing you a single list of safe foods. Tutorials explain both the app and the diet, which suggests the developer expects users to arrive without much background.

The Diary only becomes useful if you actually fill it in. Recording meals, symptoms, bowel habits and stress levels takes a few minutes a day, and the value comes from the pattern that builds over weeks rather than from any single entry. If you are not willing to keep that record, the reintroduction guidance has less to work with.

There are also a few accessibility touches worth mentioning: you can switch between metric and imperial units, and there is a color blindness assistance option. Neither is glamorous, but both make the app easier to use in the situations where you need it.

Getting the most from it day to day

The most natural rhythm is to use the Food Guide while shopping and cooking, and the Diary at the end of the day. Checking a food before you buy it takes seconds, and the certified product list is the fastest route when you are looking at packaged goods rather than fresh ingredients.

Over time that turns into a personal catalog of meals you know work for you, which is more valuable than a generic recipe list.

When you reach reintroduction, the Diary becomes the center of the app. Logging symptoms, bowel habits and stress levels alongside the foods you test is what lets you look back and see which challenges went smoothly and which did not. Stress levels are worth recording even though they are not a food, because they are one of the things people tend to forget when they try to explain a bad week.

The shopping list ties the rest together: you can plan meals from the recipes, check the ingredients in the Food Guide, and carry the resulting list with you. It is a simple loop, but it is the loop the diet requires.

A reference tool for a specific diet

The app is aimed at people managing IBS symptoms through the low FODMAP diet, and it assumes you are following that diet rather than simply curious about it. It is a Medical category app with an Everyone content rating, and it comes from the research team behind the diet itself, which is the strongest argument for it.

The case for paying $9.00 rests on the food data and the diary being in one place, backed by the same team that developed the diet. If you are working through the three steps with a dietitian, or on your own with guidance, this gives you the reference material and the record-keeping in a single app.

It is not a general nutrition app and it will not help you with anything outside FODMAP management. Within that narrow purpose, though, it covers the ground well: hundreds of foods, certified products, recipes, lists and a symptom diary. For someone starting the diet, that is a practical set of tools rather than a single lookup table.

The app was last updated in June 2026. For a reference you will consult repeatedly over months, that matters.