Dairy free food products for 14mth old?

[PregnantGrrrl]

What do you ladies recommend? I am 99% sure DS is having dairy problems, so am switching to soya milk. Can you recommend yogurts and so on that your like? Don't really want to splash out on horrible tasting stuff.

Get soya marge too. Some of the stuff they sell in the supermarkets isn't great but if you use soya marge you can make your own cakes etc.

Ok, so that's milk and margarine so far

ds has alpro soya yogurts, you get ones with added calcium and probiotic in them. We use Pure sunflower spread as i'm trying to avoid relying too much on soya. He's not very keen on rice milk but i've not tried him with anything else.

Hi,
Sainsbury's do loads of dairy -free stuff. Hipp babyfood lists whether it is dairy-free or not. Trufree is a good brand. Try www.parsleysoup.co.uk for good recipes for all the family. Both my kids are dairy-free, ds is 23 months, dd is 4and a half. takes a while to get into swing but now I cook all from scratch and they are really healthy! Good luck. Oat milk is good as well as it is lighter than soya and great for cooking.

have you tried goats milk - what are the symptoms? Soya milk is linked to a higher risk of nut allergy, its a common allergen itself and its been suggested it may cause fertility problems in boys. It's also high in sugar. If he's still a baby you can get non dairy milks for him. One of my friends has a child who was given soy because he had problems with milk - he now has a serious soy allergy and its really hard to deal with because its in so many foods.

What kind of problems does he have if you don't mind discussing? Digestive trouble, or eczema, something else? If its eczema, then goats milk is fairly well tolerated by some children, and goats yoghurt is lovely! If you are planning on going completely dairy free, then the library will usually have some recipe books, and advice for getting all the nutrients for a youngster. Good luck!

you dont have to use just soya marg, there is a PURE sunflower marg. and ds2 also has the alpro smooth soya yogs

sorry, i dittoed Tartanmam, i too dont like using too much soya. i use ricemilk with eggs when i make his scrambled eggs, you can get packs of 3 cartons from tescos, which are small cartoons so not much waste

Sojasun and Sojade yoghurts are good. Less complicated ingredients than Alpro. And the plain one mixed with fruit puree and maybe a hint of honey is lovely.

tooticky = where do you get those from? are they smooth also?
ds2 could do with different types etc

You could start thinking about using foods that don't contain dairy rather than attempting to replace dairy elements with soemthing similar. The replacements are never up to the job.

Vegan books are a good source of dairy free recipes and you can taylor them (add meat, fish or nuts or whatever you like) to your taste.

i used soy milk for a while but was warned against so went with goats milk. after a while my dd had reactions to both. i switched to lactose free milk. its great

Health food shops - independent ones are best and will often order things in for you. I think they are both mostly smooth with the occasional bit.

But why not get your ds properly tested before you go down a complicated and expensive dairy substitute route? Or if he's old nough to get nutrition from other sources, why not try just going dairy free for a week or so without substituting and see whether it helps?

seeker, some reactions to milk are allergies and will show up in tests. Others are intolerances (eg can't digest lactose) and wont.

Diagnosing oneself by trial and error isnt practical, especially if multiple reactions to different foods are involved. But taking dairy products out of a toddler's diet for say, 3 weeks, is relatively easy, and is likely to give a firm result one way or the other. A good idea is to write everything down, eg frequency/severity of symptoms before taking dairy products out, and after. Also dont tell your ds what you are doing.

If you are coming from a blind start, I personally would go completely dairy free for 3 weeks, ie no goats milk. Then if the symptoms disappear, try goats milk.

thanks all- symptoms are tight itchy skin in nappy area, which hasn't been cured by prescribed creams. he'll scratch this until it bleeds, and it's always worse the second he has a dirty nappy. sore tummy, recurring chesty cough- treated twice with anti biotics in last 3 mths, and it's back again. when we tried moving him onto drinking cow's milk in June, he was very unhappy- stopped sleeping through, sore tummy- so we put him back on formula.

i KNEW it was cow's milk really, but we cut right back, then re introduced it slowly. he seemed fine, but last night was dreadful. he had quite a bit of diary the last few days, his skin looks like a healing burn, and he was up half the night, clawing his nappy, coughing and holding his tummy.

have used Pure spread before, will get that. i think i'll try rice milk for him to drink, and get some Alpro 'yogurts' for him- i don't want him to feel left out when the others at childminders have yogurts IYSWIM.

he's going to the doctors tomorrow too.

sounds awful. hope your ds grows out of it quickly!

dont forget soya ice cream

ask the doc if you can try Pepti Junior, they can prescribe that for you and it would tell you if mmilk was the problem.

As its basically a skin problem you may want to consdier adding some extra omega 3 fatty acids to his diet - flax oil or eveingin primrose oil. And a non dairy probiotic from a health food store wouldn't do any harm. It has a good record for eczema.

gave him rice milk- he likes it, not noticed a difference. he also scoffed a Alpro yogurt last night.

see what the doctor says later now...

there is also something you can get in the cheese department - called RICE SLICES - basically look like those cheese slices you put on burgers etc but they are completely dairy free and a derivitive of rice.

ps they are hard to find though - my waitrose stocked them for a while and when they stopped and I asked for them, they restocked. very helpful. also health food shops sell them.

Doctor has prescribed Canesten for now, and referred us onto hospital to see what they say. She wasn't impressed with us giving rice milk (not enough nutrients she said) but it is fortified with vitamins / calcium, i'm giving him a seperate multivitamin and he eats well, so i'm not worried.

After a wobbly start, he slept through last night, and he's already looking better after 1 day of no dairy!

DS seems better overall, but he's still scratching himself on and off. it's not as much, but i've just had to take his baby grow off him and put him in trousers, because he was sitting in bed in the dark, scratching between the poppers

There must be something other than dairy causing a problem, but i don't know what.

i'm so sick of this, and god knows how long i'll have to wait to see specialist. So flipping tired aswell...can hear him waking up again now