What is an elemental or astronaut diet?
Astronaut diets (for example Ensure, Sustacal and Peptamen) are liquids meeting all nutritional needs and are almost completely absorbed in the upper intestinal tract. Because they don’t require much digestive effort by diseased bowel they often seem to be better tolerated than regular food by patients with active and/or severe disease. Elemental diets (for example Vivonex) consist mainly of pure amino acids (the building blocks that make up proteins) and are even easier to digest. There is some evidence that elemental diets may be helpful therapeutically in CD. However, these diets are expensive and patients find it difficult to comply with them on a long term basis so they have not evolved into a practical treatment. In contrast there is no evidence that elemental diets are of benefit in UC.
