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Six shaker blends, no onion or garlic

Once psyllium is a shaker on the table, it may as well earn its place. Every blend here is onion- and garlic-free by design, because those are two of the most common triggers for wind and cramping.

Robin Tasker · lived experience

New to this? Read the method and the safety notes first — including who shouldn't use psyllium at all, and which grade of husk to buy.

How to make any of them

  1. 1Weigh the ingredients. The proportions matter — eyeballing herbs gets you a shaker of oregano with a hint of fibre.
  2. 2Rub the dried herbs between your palms into the mix, so there are no big flakes to jam the shaker.
  3. 3Shake the jar hard. Store airtight, away from heat and steam.
  4. 4Label it with the date and the weight of one level teaspoon, so you know what a shake actually delivers.
  5. 5Make small batches. Dried herbs fade, and the whole blend is a moisture magnet.

Shake the jar before every meal

Psyllium husk is feather-light and salt is dense. Put them in a jar and physics does the rest — the heavy particles migrate down and the light ones up. Left alone for a few days, your first shakes come out psyllium-heavy and your last come out salt-heavy. Give it a proper shake, not a swirl.

The six

Everyday Salt

The default. Goes on anything.

1.8g

psyllium per level teaspoon

0.2

GASP score for that teaspoon

Likely gentler

Makes a 50 g batch

90% psyllium. A level teaspoon is about 2 g of blend.

Why it's built this way. With a high-output stoma you lose sodium constantly, and plenty of us are told to salt food more, not less. This blend does two jobs at once.

Good on: Everything — eggs, chips, rice, soup, chicken, potato.

Check which advice wins first. If you also have high blood pressure, kidney disease or heart failure you may have been told the opposite about salt, and your stoma advice and your heart advice can genuinely conflict. If the answer is go easy, drop the salt to a pinch and use one of the herb blends instead.

Green Goddess

The ranch one, minus the garlic.

1.6g

psyllium per level teaspoon

0.5

GASP score for that teaspoon

Likely gentler

Makes a 50 g batch

80% psyllium. A level teaspoon is about 2 g of blend.

Good on: Mashed potato, eggs, salmon, cucumber, plain chicken — anything that needs to taste like it came out of a nicer kitchen.

Smoky Paprika

Warmth without the heat.

1.64g

psyllium per level teaspoon

0.4

GASP score for that teaspoon

Likely gentler

Makes a 50 g batch

82% psyllium. A level teaspoon is about 2 g of blend.

Why it's built this way. Chilli is deliberately left out. Plenty of us don't tolerate it, and capsaicin can speed transit — the opposite of what the whole shaker is for.

Good on: Chips, wedges, roast sweet potato, chicken, corn, scrambled eggs.

Roast Umami

Savoury depth with no onion or garlic.

1.46g

psyllium per level teaspoon

0.7

GASP score for that teaspoon

Likely gentler

Makes a 50 g batch

73% psyllium. A level teaspoon is about 2 g of blend.

Why it's built this way. The hardest one to get right, because everything savoury in a supermarket has onion powder in it. Nutritional yeast and kelp both carry glutamates, and stacking them reads as far more savoury than either alone — yeast on its own tastes like yeast; yeast with kelp tastes like stock. Sweet paprika rather than smoked, because smoked is a foreground flavour that wears thin by the third meal of the day.

Good on: Mince, gravy, mashed potato, soup, roast veg, plain pasta.

Two things. Kelp is the highest-iodine sea vegetable, so it stays at 1% — don't stack it with other kelp products, and skip it if you have a thyroid condition. And this blend contains celery and mustard, both declared allergens; nutritional yeast is worth flagging too, since some people with Crohn's avoid yeast deliberately.

Warm Spice

Built for the bland end of the low-residue diet.

1.76g

psyllium per level teaspoon

0.4

GASP score for that teaspoon

Likely gentler

Makes a 50 g batch

88% psyllium. A level teaspoon is about 2 g of blend.

Good on: Boiled carrots, sweet potato, pumpkin, mash, parsnip, chicken soup, white sauce.

What doesn't belong in a shaker

Some genuinely delicious things will weld your shaker shut, because they pull water out of the air. Put them next to psyllium, which is also thirsty, and you've built a device that seizes itself. Rule of thumb: if it clumps in its own jar, it'll clump in your shaker faster.

Tomato powder

The worst offender. It sets into a brick shortly after opening, and suppliers tell you to refrigerate it.

Onion or garlic powder

Clumps badly — and they're two of the most common triggers anyway, which is why none of these blends use them.

Brown or coconut sugar

Holds moisture. Fine in a lidded jar with a spoon, poor in a shaker.

Any flaky dried herb, un-rubbed

Jams the holes rather than passing through them. Rub herbs between your palms first.

A note on how these are scored

Each score is for one level teaspoon of blend, not the whole batch — nobody eats fifty grams of seasoning. They all land in the gentlest band, which is the honest result for a two-gram sprinkle and rather the point: you get the psyllium without paying for it elsewhere. Dried parsley, thyme, chives and dill are scored against their fresh entries, because we hold dried oregano as its own food but not the others yet. At these quantities it moves the number by less than a rounding.

The three sweet blends, and why sugar works against you →

Written and checked from lived experience with a J-pouch. Last updated August 2026. The GASP Score is a modelled estimate, not medical advice — always work alongside your own clinical team.