how do you go abroad with a child with food allergies?

[ruty]

18 months ds has to be gluten and dairy free, and we hope to go to italy at easter to see friends, but will probably be staying in a hotel/B and B. We were hoping to drive to see friends in Germany on the way, but that means a couple of nights in B and Bs on the way too. How lovely it would be to be able to go to a restaurant and be able to feed him pasta, but i doubt they've even heard of gluten free pasta in italy. As i usually prepare all his meals for him, unless we have a self catering place this will be very difficult. anyone had experience of this, and how did you cope? Feeling like we might not go at the moment, it all seems too complicated. any advice gratefully received.

[foxinsocks]

we generally self catered

otherwise, you can always buy baby food jars (the toddler ones with lumps!) that are gluten/dairy free

or do lots of side orders of vegetables and pick some meat out of your dish and give him that - it's not easy but don't let it put you off a nice break!

[zippitippitoes]

you might find something useful here \link{http://www.foodsmatter.com/Holidays.htm\ foods matter links for holidays and travel}

[foundintranslation]

Where in Germany ae your friends/where is on your rout, ruty?

[lucy5]

There is an organisation that prints cards in a variety of languages which explain what cannot be eaten. Im sure I read about it on here.

[ruty]

thanks for those ideas - that's very useful - we're going to heidelberg FiT.

[Ellbell]

Ruty

Clicked on this by accident and have no experience of food allergies. However, just wanted to say that you can get gluten free pasta in Italy. It's called 'pasta deglutinata'. Obviously though you wouldn't find it on most restaurant menus. Have you considered going self-catering? Presumably your ds could have risotto as long as you were sure it hadn't got any cheese or anything in. Sorry, not much help... CAT me if you want me to translate a little note for you to show people in restaurants etc. to explain that your ds can't have gluten/dairy. People will help if they can. Don't let it stop you having a break.

[ruty]

ooh thanks ellbell! might do that! would much prefer self catering, its just the problem of having only four nights in Italy and two or three night stops on the way.

[ruty]

thanks especially zippititoes for that link - that may come in useful quite a lot in future.

[Chandra]

Ruty, we were in Italy last week (DS is allergic to milk, nuts, fish, egg, beans, soya, etc. and we survived)

It made things loads eaiser to carry a card saying the following:

"Bambino allergico al latticini (latte, formagio, burro, etc) e _*

Che piatto/i mi consigia?

Mille grazie"

• Don't know the word for glutten, sorry.
  
  The waiters and cooks went out of their way to cook something safe, and they were very honest when they were not sure.
  
  We also carried around a little lunch box with his Rice milk, safe snacks (mostly fruit), a tin of raw corn pasta (this worked very well, you can choose from the restaurant menu and then ask them to cook the dish with the pasta provided)
  
  I also took wrapped pieces of cakes I have cooked at home and kept them in the hotel fridge (there is a glutten free chocolate cake flour which is sold in the free from sections in big Sainsbury's).
  
  Hope that helps
  
  Ch

[Chandra]

If you are only going for few days, take the pasta with you, you don't want to spend loads of time going from one place to the other looking for it. We kept a packet at the hotel and just refilled the containers to take with us once a day.

We did the same with the cakes (they come handful if you are having just a coffee in a Cafe (we order from the menu and then let DS join us with his beloved chocolate cake and small tetrabrick of rice milk :))

[Chandra]

In case of emergencies (if you run out of food and the hotel is not near), there's always MC Donalds for safe milk free chips.

You can also pick up an allergy list form any Mc Donalds in the UK, they are very good at specifying which bits of a certain "plate" contain the allergens. (these allergy sheets are printed on the back of those papers they place on the trays)

Have a nice trip!

[ruty]

McDonalds! No, but thanks Chandra, i hadn;t thought of asking a restaurant to cook gluten free pasta, that's a good idea. And can you get small packs of rice milk? I can only get the big packs. They would be useful. thanks for tips.

[Chandra]

Ruty, see the thread on MC Donalds toys this week, you will see I'm not endorsing it but it's one of the few safe places to go if you have a very allergic child, amny mums of allergic children agree with me. It has helped us a lot in many trips, especially when the food of the country is completely different to the one you are used to. Though, I would not recommend, under any circumstances, to use it very often! :)

You can get small packets of RiceDream Original in some health food stores and some major Sainsbury's. We also took a big cartoon (they don't do small packets in the calcium enriched version, so we left the little cartoon for when we were out and about and the regular calcium enriched milk to drink with breakfast (at hotel) and before going to bed.

Appart of carrying pasta, we also took DS's cereal in the same way, very convenient to have your own safe cereal and just add fruit from the hotel buffet.

[foundintranslation]

Heidelberg? What's your route there? If you come past us we can give you a meal and/or organise overnight accommodation (afraid we've a 1 bed flat so not really enough room for you to stay).

[Chandra]

Ruty, see the thread on MC Donalds toys this week, you will see I'm not endorsing it but it's one of the few safe places to go if you have a very allergic child, many mums of allergic children agree with me. It has helped us a lot in many trips, especially when the food of the country is completely different to the one you are used to and you don't know what to expect to be in it. Though, I would not recommend, under any circumstances, to use it very often! :)

You can get small packets of RiceDream Original in some health food stores and some major Sainsbury's. We also took a big carton (they don't do small packets in the calcium enriched version, so we left the little cartons for when we were out and about and the regular calcium enriched milk to drink with breakfast (at hotel) and before going to bed.

Apart of carrying pasta, we also took DS's cereal in the same way, very convenient to have your own safe cereal and just add fruit from the hotel buffet.

[ruty]

that is so sweet of you FiT - you're a star. Dh is kind of in a bit of trepidation at the moment about the driving, so we're discussing flying - it would be a shame to miss our friends in Heidelberg though. Whereabouts are you?

Chandra - i do know what you mean - when you're stranded it is a relief to know anywhere that can provide food that is allergy free for your child.

[foundintranslation]

We're east of Stuttgart. Let me know if/how that fits in. Even if it's not on the way I could ring the B&B(s) you choose and explain the situation if you like (just assuming you don't know German here, sorry).

[brimfull]

really interested in this thread
ds has nut and egg allergy and the only places we've taken him to are Canada (very safe and easy) and France where we did self catering and took a travel dietary card as mentioned before.

We're doing tuscany this summer and self catering again so I was glad to hear all went well chandra.

Sorry no advice re gluten free but hope all goes well.

[7up]

chandra, is the cereal and pasta all gluten, dairy and soya free? if so, where do you get it from please?my ds is living on gluten free bread, potatoes, ham, chicken and veg (fruit gives him belly ache)and sweet baby jars and hes not gaining weight so more food would be fantastic for him. the prescriptions the doc gave us for pasta had soya in so was no good

[7up]

chandra, is the cereal and pasta all gluten, dairy and soya free? if so, where do you get it from please?my ds is living on gluten free bread, potatoes, ham, chicken and veg (fruit gives him belly ache)and sweet baby jars and hes not gaining weight so more food would be fantastic for him. the prescriptions the doc gave us for pasta had soya in so was no good

[Chandra]

You can get glutten, milk, soya, nut, egg free pasta from Sainsbury's Free From Range (it's made out of maize). Dietary Specials (can get it form Sainsbury and ASDA) makes Chocolate Cake Flour Mix and Bluberry Muffin Mix. They need to be mixed with egg that you can substitute for OrgranNoEgg (available from health food shops) or with orange juice, bananas, etc. They also do a light crispbread and many other products mostly gluten free. There is sort of a Margarine called Pure (or Pura?) which is also safe, the one made out of sunflower oil works pretty well for desserts.

I suspect you can make chicken fingers using orgran no egg and spelt flour.

DS lost lots of weight at the beginning of the restricted diet, dietitian advised to increase the amounts of greases he was taking so we started cooking a full fat version of everything we were having (we all are eating mostly the same food which has made things considerably easier especially because it forced us to adapt faster to the changes).

You can also bake bread made out of Spelt flour (gluten free), it tastes much better than the rice bread alternative sold at stores (and works out much cheaper too)

If he can have rice, get a good cooking book on Rissotos, most of them can be easily addapted to avoid the allergens our DSs share :))

HTH

[7up]

thanks chandra,ive got the dietician with ds on 6th April. wonder if you can get the pasta on prescription as get income support top up to part time work so money is very tight and i think sainsburys is quite expensive isnt it. il have to go and have a nose anyway and go without my weekly treat to get him something

[ruty]

thanks FinT - will let you know what we decide.
7Up Orgran also do gluten free pasta, but my ds doesn't like it much. Organix do a very good banana rice cereal which you can mix with rice milk - its quite nice, and they do very gluten dairy free snacks too - carrot stix and tomato noughts and crosses corn snacks. You can get them in Sainsburys.
Just wondering Chandra, did you fly to Italy? I was thinking its harder to take all the food we need if we fly...

[7up]

thanks ruty

[Chandra]

We did Ruty, but it was not that bad, packets of pasta and cereal don't weight much, nor does it a a lt of rice milk. We divided the small milk cartons between the hand luggage and the cheched in. You can get at least 20kg of checked baggage in any airline, that's enough to take enough for more than a week. Now, if you are going in summer (light smaller clothes) even more space!)

The only thing I can recommend you 7up, is to write down every single thing that you want to ask the dietitian and present it in a very structured way as there may not be enough time to talk it through and for her to help you. Unfortunately with children with so many allergies like us, an hour consultation is far from being enough. I waited for DS's appointment for nine months and when the day of the appointment finally came, just in covering his symptoms we spent the full hour and she certainly didn't tell me anything new (apart of adding oil to DS's milk! yuk). So we had to pay for a private appointment and again, she didn't have much time to advice, they don't get to see so many allergies in a single child very often.

As for the pasta (Sainsbury's one is good enough that even I like it ), make a note of the products you would like her to prescribed, I have just been told by one dietititian that the number of products available for such combination of allergies is rather limited and from those, the number of them that can be get in prescription is even smaller . I suppose that if you get her a list of the products your DS may be fine with, there are better chances to get something done about it, otherwise she may not even know that those products do really match your DS's dietetic requirements.