What Can You Eat for Breakfast With Gallbladder Disease?

Your gallbladder may be small, but when it's diseased, it causes mighty uncomfortable symptoms. A gallbladder disease diet can help ease or prevent the complications of the disease, including gallstones. A healthy, low-fat breakfast is part of a healthful pattern of eating.

Your gallbladder breakfast can include many tasty foods, but excludes typical fatty options such as sausage and bacon.

The gallbladder sits just under your liver and stores bile, a fluid used to digest fat. It's pear-shaped and relatively small.

After you eat, your stomach and intestines start to digest and process the food. Your gallbladder releases bile into the small intestine through a bile duct to help with food processing and breakdown.

‌Read more:‌ Foods to Avoid with Gallbladder Sludge Problems

If you have a block in the bile duct, you end up with pain in the gallbladder. Gallbladder disease describes infection, inflammation, blockage of the duct or stones. Conditions that can affect the gallbladder, as described by Johns Hopkins Medicine, include:

• Cholecystitis, or inflammation of the gallbladder
• Gallstones
• Tumors in the form of cancer (rare)
• Abscesses
• Congenital defects
• Irregular growths of tissue

Your doctor diagnoses gallbladder disease and can tell you more about treatment and management as well as prognosis. If gallbladder disease can't be managed, surgery may be necessary to remove the organ. Fortunately, bile has other ways of reaching the small intestine.

A healthy, nutrient-dense diet helps to keep your gallbladder in perfect health. What you eat can stimulate the gallbladder and provoke pain from disease and inflammation. As pointed out in a proposal for research published in the ‌Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews‌ in March 2017, dietary fat, in particular, has an impact on gallbladder pain.

The authors also suggested the possibility that restricting fats can lower a person's cholesterol levels and, as a result, cholesterol in the bile. Cholesterol in the bile plays a role in the development of gallstones.

A low-fat diet essentially gives your gallbladder a rest, relieving the symptoms of inflammation.

Keeping your total calorie intake under control can also help ease gallbladder pain. A study of Iranian women diagnosed with gallbladder disease published in the‌ Journal of Health, Population and Nutrition‌ in March 2015 found that women who experienced rapid weight gain, consumed a high number of calories and had a diet described as "unhealthy" were more likely to develop the disease.

Foods that are aggravating to gallbladder disease are those that are high in fat, processed and contain lots of refined white flour, such as white breads and pasta. Fried foods, especially those prepared in vegetable or peanut oil, can also be aggravating.

Breakfast-specific foods you should avoid include sausage, bacon, cinnamon rolls and other high-fat baked treats, whole milk, processed cheese, egg yolks and butter. Even some healthy foods that are high in fat, such as avocado, nuts and nut butter, are best left off your gallbladder breakfast menu.

When you've been diagnosed with gallbladder disease, choose lower fat foods. You don't have to eliminate all fat, however, because a little fat is good for you.

Gallbladder-friendly foods include:

• Lean meats, such as white fish and chicken or turkey breast
• Plant-based proteins, such as lentils or tofu
• Fat-free salad dressings, sour cream and cream cheese
• Whole grains, such as oats, brown rice, quinoa and barley
• Low-fat or no-fat dairy, such as yogurt, milk and cottage cheese
• Fresh fruits and vegetables
• Egg whites

The Health Systems of British Columbia suggests that, when you choose low-fat dairy, you should choose skim or 1-percent milk, lower fat yogurt with 2 percent or less milk fat and lower-fat cheese with 20 percent milk fat or less. If you do eat chicken or turkey, remove the skin. If you use sauces, make them with low-fat or nonfat plain yogurt or go for salsa or squeezed-on citrus juices.

High-fiber foods deter the formation of gallstones and inflammation in the gallbladder. ‌Georgian Medical News‌ published research in June 2014 demonstrating that a high-fiber diet showed statistically significant benefits for prevention of a sluggish bile duct, thus preventing gallbladder disease. High-fiber foods include leafy greens, whole grains and many fruits.

Alberta Health Systems of Canada suggests that people with gallbladder disease eat many small meals and snacks throughout the day. At breakfast, for example, you might have just a banana and a low-fat yogurt at first and then a few hours later a slice of whole-grain toast with a smear of strawberry all-fruit jam. Small meals make for easier digestion and don't overload your gallbladder.

Putting all these recommendations together into gallbladder-disease recipes can feel challenging, especially if you've always loved a big, hearty breakfast with lots of traditional, fatty foods. But, you still have lots of options.

Refine your eating habits. Breakfast ideas for gallbladder disease include:

• Egg white omelet or frittata with a variety of chopped vegetables cooked with a spritz of olive oil
• Oatmeal with berries and low-fat milk or almond/soy milk
• Fresh fruit and low-fat yogurt
• Whole-grain toast or bagel with fat-free cream cheese
• Whole grain ready-to-eat cereal with low-fat milk and banana
• Tofu scramble cooked in a small amount of olive oil and made with soft tofu, black beans, fresh herbs and tomato salsa
• Ground white-meat turkey with fennel, oregano and black pepper, chopped bell pepper and onion formed into patties and baked in the oven
• Whole-grain toast with sliced tomato and melted low-fat cheese
• Fruit smoothie made with strawberries, banana, low-fat yogurt and ice

If you do add meat to your breakfast, even if it's lean, watch what meat you eat later in the day. Alberta Health Systems recommends eating not more than two to three servings of meat a day.