In relation to the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, the terms "legal" and "illegal" simply describe foods that either CAN or CANNOT be eaten, when following the diet. While these rather drastic sounding words may be a little off-putting, they were designed by the author Elaine Gotschall to highlight the extreme importance of really sticking to these foods. Unlike some diets, where it doesn't matter that much if you eat a little of the wrong stuff, on the SCD diet, it really matters! Eating the wrong thing (an "illegal,") could start a flare or set you back for a few weeks! No, you won't be ticketed for eating an illegal, but if you choose to follow the SCD, you don't want to undo all your good work by snitching an illegal now and then! It's just not worth it!

Some great work was done on the SCD Legal/Illegal list in 2011 by Paul Stoker of eatingSCD.com. In the right hand column he's placed a reference number, showing where he got the information from the sources listed at the bottom of the last page. We share his PDF document below:

To download this document, click here.