Milk, Egg, Wheat, Soya free diet - help please!

[wadadlis]

Hi, the gastroenterologist at GOSH told us yesterday that my 2 year old son should follow a MEWS diet for 8 weeks to help establish whether he has any allergies which might explain v poor appetite and chronic constipation.

Whilst the dietitian at GOSH has given me lots of leaflets, I would really appreciate it if anybody could give me any advice. In particular a cook book they might recommend, or websites which are useful. And does bread exist which is free of all these things, or should I buy a bread maker! And is there a good place to buy these types of food? I live in north London. Sorry to ramble.

Any help would be most welcome.

Hi, my youngest has allergies to all of these along side coconut oil(weird I know!). We have found Waitrose is great for 'free from' food and the flour they sell has recipes on the back of he packs!
Most of the gluten free cook books I have looked at include dairy products in the recipe but butter and margarine can be swapped for Vitalite which is free from milk and soya and we use Oatly oat milk or rice milk which are both available in Waitrose.
Good luck as we're still findong our feet on this and it's by no means easy!

I am on this diet whilst BF my rather sensitive LO and it's a right pain.

We live on rice cakes or GF porridge oats and occasionally plain tortilla chips. I do give her GF bread which contains egg white, but she seems to be ok so long as we don't have it too often. Yellow PURE is another DF marg option and works well in baking, etc. I can't recommend many books as most only have a handful of recipes that are useful. I tend to scour the BBC good food site. A recent hit was a mild chicken curry made with sweet potato, lentils and coconut milk. Nice and calorific! Most supermarkets have a good Free From section but again, not much is free from everything in the list. We stick to meat and two veg-type meals, often tomato based. When out it is either plain baked potato or steak and chips. It's really tough. I feel for you.

Love pig in the kitchen's site!

Try these people too:

www.livingfood.co.uk/products-8-Living_Food_Foods.htm

The spicy chickpea bread is a flatbread and very much like naan. You could take the spicy stuff out of the recipe and just make it without. My husband is coeliac and loves this recipe.

I'm afraid that following a visit to my son's dietician yesterday I have to withdraw the suggestion of rice milk - by all accounts it contains too much arsenic!!

Hi,
for gluten free try www.tartemaison.co.uk - although they do contain butter and eggs, they are really tasty, not like the normal gluten free cardboard pastry!

Google 'Bakin' without eggs' - great recipe book for cake type stuff. Worth having if you're going to be doing this in the long term. In the short term, for us, it was all meat and two veg which in all honesty I didn't find too bad as there are so many variants! There are baby porridge's which are MEWS free - try the Holle range (in Waitrose round here) and there's a Plum 4 grain baby porridge which even though your DS is much bigger would prob be ok.

I only had to do this diet when DS was first weaning though so no experience with a 2 yo (was able to give DS things like an avocado for breakfast - not sure he'll go for that once he's 2!!) - sounds tough, so good luck .

hi i've been following a mews free diet for my youngest son for around 8 months now. (along with many other things he just can't stomach!)
so hope this helps:

MEWS free bread - Ener-g bread, usually found in sainsburys, also available on percription which you should be able to get if you nspeak to your dietitian. also available in range, which i found are very handy, pizza bases, i just make pizzas like normal but without the cheese. i have a 3 and half yr old with same allergies who happily eats both.

ORGAN mini outback biscuits avoid everything you need, also available from sainsburys.

ORGAN egg replacer(from most health food shops) works well for all cakes etc and also good used along with MRS CRIMBLES breadcrumbs (sainsburys) to coat chicken/fresh fish pieces for nuggets.

The most helpful link i found was again with sainsburys it is sainsbury's/allergy in your search engine then select product guidance lists. you can then select what you are trying to avoid and it will bring you a list of all their own brand produts which avoid the allergens selected. with muliple allergies like ours you sometimes haver to cross ref but after the first time it's really easy.

I have many many recipes for cakes meals and snacks etc so email me if you would like any.x

forgot to say in regards to the spag pasta. you should only snap it once and when boiling the water add a teaspoon of olive oil, and boil slowly. still is a little sticky but seems to be better than the cloudy sticky mess i ended up with to start with.

DS has the same allergies, but also beef and probably peanut.

I make own bread, and don't use milk. River Cottage Family Cookbook has good bread recipes.

We use Oatly milk/cream for cooking. Kara for cereal and as others have suggested, Pure.

In terms of menu planning, we have lots of pizza (homemade dough) with veg/lentils (pureed!), tahini/toast, sticky chicken (bbq sauce) and chips, jacket potatoes and beans, tacos, veg pasta.

Snacks include: rice cakes, oat cakes. You can get a dairy/soya free chocolate. Montezuma Blue.

In terms of eating out, I find middle eastern food good for DS. Falafels, hummous, and most pita breads are just water and flour, but check. Also southern Indian cooking tends to be vegan.

It gets easier.

Thank you all for your suggestions and words of support, much appreciated.
Sorry for late reply, we have been camping in the rain...
Hope that the MEWS diet makes a difference and DS starts eating again. We're going on it as a family and I am also hoping that it might mean I lose some weight!

I have loads of allergies.
Try vitalite for spreading and baking. its got no dairy or soya and tastes just like buttery spreads. Its less than a pound too.
try goats milk or rice milk both great alternatives. instead of bread you can try corn wraps or corn flats ryevita?
Sainsburys do a great range of childrens chocolate and sweets that have nothing in your little on cant eat.
There are loads of pastas there too for special diets. I personally dont like the taste of SD branded but the australian branded ones taste better than the wheat versions. If you want to eat out most restaurants that prepare food from scratch can and will cook especially to your needs at no extra cost. Although at the beginning this can all seem quite daunting and somewhat distressing at times. Be assured you are not alone and you learn very quickly to adjust. 2 of my children had allergies at birth both grew out of them mostly but age 6. If i can be of any more help just let me know

I was wondering how wadadlis was getting on, as I'm frantically trying to compose a list of meals for this week which are MEWS & nut free. I'm SO tired of the same things day in, day out. I'm following the diet as still BF my 9mo who is sensitive to all of the above.

So far, we tend to eat:
BREAKFAST
me - Genius toast
dd - GF porridge & fruit

LUNCH

• GF bread/toast/rice cakes with: banana, houmous, avocado & lettuce & tomatoes (not dd though - they make her sick when eaten raw)

- homemade soup with Neocate & baby stock cubes [bleurgh emoticon] - mackerel fillets/fishcakes (dd only - I don't like fish)

DINNER

• spag bol

- GF pasta & veg with homemade tomato sauce - homemade fajitas & guacamole with tacos/nachips (quite salty though) - lamb stew/casserole - mince & tatties/Shepherd's pie - GF sausages, chips & peas (again, quite salty) - coconut & lentil chicken curry (tho lentils make dd really windy)

Any further inspiration is SO welcome. I'll definitely look for pizza bases. I know they are likely to contain egg, but may just chance it anyway, especially since dd seems to tolerate the egg white in Genius bread (i think, anyway).

Not sure what a MEWS diet is but my son has milk, nut and egg allergy. Some additional things I make are:

Fish cakes (with home made breadcrumbs and mix of cornflour and water as egg substitute)
roast and veg
Fried rice
Home made pizza (without cheese - still tastes fine)
fish fingers (some are egg/milk free)
chilli con carne (minus chilli)

Some things I've learnt along the way:

You can get packet sponge/cup cake mix from Morrisons/ASDA/Tesco which are milk free (mainly the value range in each but check).

1 tbsp cornflour = 1 egg for making stuff

Five Alive Citrus Juice at ASDA/Tesco/MOrrisons and Tesco Calcium fortified Juice (usually in bigger stores) for calcium substitution (esp. if soya is off limits).

Morrisons have dark chocolate in their free-from range which is milk-free (not sure about soya)

Value range of breads in stores are usually milk free as is Braces (not sure of other brands)

This is the old recipezaar site which is now this link. I use it all the time.

www.food.com/

hobnob57 - This is a great pizza dough recipe (wish I could find the original recipe I found it on) Mix 3 cups plain flour/1 pkt dry yeast (7g), 2tbsp veg oil, 1tsp salt/1tbsp white sugar/1 cup warm water - mix all together with hands until you get a large ball and knead it a few times. Then roll it out to desired size of pan and top it with fillings. It works out great.

Going now...

ooh thanks Careybliss. We are wheat/gluten-free just now so I'll try the pizza base with GF flour.

And yes, roasts are a winner

Hi. My son as multiple food allergies and I found a good book: "allergy-free cookbook" by Alice Sherwood, containing recipes that are egg, dairy, gluten, nuts and usually also soya free.

My son had the same issue cos his grandma thought milk was so important he use to have 5-6 full bottles of fresh cows whole milk everyday. He was born with eczema and had low iron suffered a lot thankfully the mews diet helps i've stuck to rice based products such rice cakes rice noodles veg and chicken n meat. Oatly milk is the substitute for milk its much lighter and still keeps him hungry and you can get in choc flavour which works well with rice crispies but if you do go on to oatly milk you'll need to give him another form of calcium either by foods or supplement well kid is what I use.

Its really hard but it works my dietician said fresh 300ml of milk a day is good enough for that age. Anything you do try please consult with your doctor as each case is different. Hope this helps my son is also allergic to eggs which was establish through skin prick test and followed up by rasp test and bloods. do not worry about it constipation all kids go through that phase they need to just be encouraged to get through it and push it out and they'll feel better and a varied and balanced diet of all food groups usually helps.