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Sigma Nutrition Radio

#601: Gallstones & Gallbladder Conditions: Impact of Diet – Angela Madden, PhD RD

Sigma Nutrition Radio

Danny Lennon

Nutrition, Health & Fitness

4.8 • 633 Ratings

🗓️ 14 April 2026

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This episode examines what we actually know (and importantly, what we do not know) about diet in relation to gallstones and gallbladder conditions. Much of the public-facing guidance around gallstones focuses on "avoiding fatty foods", yet Dr. Angela Madden explains that this long-standing practice sits on surprisingly weak direct evidence, particularly when judged against the standards typically expected for clinical dietary recommendations.

A central theme is the need to separate two distinct questions: dietary factors that influence the risk of developing gallstones (prevention), versus dietary strategies intended to reduce symptoms or complications once gallstones exist (management). While the prevention literature suggests plausible, consistent associations with overall diet quality and lifestyle factors, the specific question of prescribing a low-fat diet to manage symptomatic gallstones lacks robust randomized trial evidence.

Dr Angela Madden is a clinical researcher in nutrition and dietetics at the University of Hertfordshire, where she established and led the nutrition and dietetics subject group and now focuses her research on improving nutritional assessment, dietary interventions, and patient-centred outcomes in clinical and public health settings.

Timestamps

  • [02:09] Discussion with Dr. Angela Madden begins
  • [06:53] Understanding the gallbladder
  • [08:08] Gallbladder disorders and their prevalence
  • [13:42] Risk factors and pathophysiology
  • [22:15] Dietary factors and gallstone formation
  • [27:20] Exploring dietary fat and gallstones
  • [34:09] Broader dietary considerations
  • [45:44] Practical dietary recommendations

Related Resources

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello and welcome to Sigma Nutrition Radio. My name is Danny Lennon. You are listening to episode

0:06.0

601 of the podcast. You are very welcome. And a very special thank you to everyone who

0:12.3

listened into our milestone episode 600 of the podcast last week and had very pleasant things to

0:19.5

say about it. Thank you for that. And thank you for

0:22.2

being a listener for however long it's been for you, whether that's for many years and for the

0:27.3

12 years that this podcast have been going, or maybe you're a relatively new listener. Regardless,

0:32.5

thank you so much for listening in and hopefully you enjoy another evidence-based discussion here today.

0:38.5

We're going to be getting into some clinical nutrition and dietetics today

0:42.3

and specifically taking a look at gallstone formation related to other gallbladder conditions

0:48.7

and some of the dietary management around that for people who are symptomatic

0:53.2

and suffering with gallstones

0:55.5

or the related consequences of that. And then also we maybe touch on situations post gallbladder

1:02.2

removal as well. And this actually comes off the back of a question that I got quite a while

1:07.4

back from one of our premium subscribers, Katerina. And so thank you so much,

1:12.0

Katarina, for the suggestion for this as a topic and some of the questions around this.

1:17.5

And indeed, one of the things we do inside of Sigma Nutrition Premium is have a place where

1:22.5

our premium subscribers can suggest either questions or topics like this that they would like to see covered at some

1:28.7

point on the podcast and those are used to generate some of the podcast episodes. Some of those

1:34.3

are premium exclusive episodes. Others like this are conversations with experts. And so some of the

1:41.3

discussion that comes up around dietary fat intake in particular and how that relates to either someone that is symptomatic with a gallbladder condition or post-surgery and has had their gallbladder removed, some of the recommendations there, was a question that Katerina had put forward on the basis that it's a commonly discussed issue this kind of connection

2:02.0

with dietary fat intake and maybe the use of a low fat diet but do actually have good evidence for

2:07.8

such interventions and so to discuss this topic i'm very lucky and honored to be talking to dr angela madden

...

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