To ask for quick dairy free help for ds?

[bobstersmum]

I posted the other day as my 5 year old ds has been having blood and mucus in his stools, he's now had loose stools for going on a week. I had his doctors appointment this morning and after a good examination he said his first port of call is to try dairy free for two weeks.
For background my ds has had over a year of stomach problems. He is on omeprazole for acid reflux as he was randomly vomiting, but has virtually always had either constipation or loose stools. He was bf until almost 3. Recently he's been on the toilet up to 10 times a day and it's usually very mucussy.
School have said they can facilitate a dairy free lunch although I'm nervous about this as I know its not as simple as no milk or cheese!
Can anyone give me some easily available foods that are dairy free please?

The supermarkets have a few dairy free things, but I usually make snacks myself
What exactly are you looking for? Snacks, packup, dinners, teas?

My dc is allergic to dairy. Loads of dairy alternatives available. Oatly milk is probably the best alternative milk, they do a cream too.

DS has school meals with no issue. Lots of jacket potatoes with beans/tuna. Hellman's full day mayo is dairy free. He has jelly for dessert at school.

What type of food does he like?

Swap milk for oatly or rice dream. Soya yogurts, you can make custard and some hot chocolates with non dairy milk.

Pure margarine is dairy free, the sunflower one is nicer than the soya.

Cakes, cookies and desserts are a challenge at first but easy to get round. Foxes party rings, pink wafers and some Tesco value range and M&S rich tea and digestives are worth checking. We no longer live in the UK and the 'main contain' warning makes surprise appearances so best check first!!

Swedish glacé ice cream. You can

Oreos, some bourbon biscuits, rich tea biscuits, coconut yogurts, vegan cheese, most crackers are ok, watch out for pate. Vitalite is a good dairy free spread

Hi, thank you he will be over the moon about the hellmans as he loves tuna mayo sandwiches. School did mention him having jacket potato for lunch but I know he will soon get bored of that. He isn't fussy. It was the milk I was going to ask about so I will get some oat milk, only for cereal really. Are most cereals dairy free? He's not got much of a sweet tooth but will have a biscuit after evening meal sometimes, has anyone got any idea which biscuits are dairy free? I can see there are free from aisles online but I don't want him going gluten free as well. Is there a decent alternative to butter as a spread? Are the dairy free yoghurt passable? His meals at home are no problem as I mostly cook from scratch unless it's fish fingers day and I'm assuming they are ok! For bread, hovis seems to be ok as it does not say milk, but neither did Warburton bread but then says not suitable for milk allergy sufferers so I'm not sure! Oh, he does like a bag of crisps for a snack if we are out and about, any to avoid?
Thanks for any help!

If you are going totally dairy free there are some things you need to avoid that you might not think of. Chicken flavoured things eg crisps, gravy granules can include dairy. Some breads also contain dairy.

You will become an expert at reading labels, and always check them as ingredients can change.

One thing I found was that people never thought pizzas would be a problem. Obviously you can get dairy free pizzas but most people thought your bog standard pizza (with cheese on it) would be fine!

DS was a baby when he was on dairy free diet, grew out of the allergy when he was 2, but he really liked the Alpro soya yoghurts. Although some children are allergic to soya as well as dairy. I used the pure sunflower margarine (again a lot of people think you can use any margarine as it is not butter) and would use that for baking/cooking. We used it as a family as it tastes nice.

I would check the labels on fish fingers some may have dairy in the coating

Vitalite and pure are dairy free margarines found in the usual matg isle in the supermarkets. Soya yoghurts are really good taste wise, as is dairy free soft cheese. Hard cheese is a bit hit and miss but Asda do a block of 'cheddar' for £2 which is an ok price to try it.

Tesco Bourbon biscuits are dairy free, as is Aldi angel cake. You will need to read the ingredients on EVERYTHInG before you buy. If there's no milk listed in the ingredients but the product is still labelled 'not suitable for milk allergy sufferers' I tend to buy t anyway. My LO has a fairly severe milk allergy but doesn't react to these products - it seems to be arse covering by those who make the products.

Salt and vinegar crisps randomly have milk in sometimes - be warned! That's my contribution

Also, avoid anything that says whey protein as that's derived from milk (apologies if this is obvious)!

You should also ask the GP do test for Coeliac disease - that would explain many of the symptoms you list.

For main meals, yes jacket potatoes (when eating out, always ask for
no butter, sometimes it's a reflex to put butter on vegetables and on jacket potatoes) are fine but there are lots of other things that can easily be dairy free,
spagetti bolognese, just leave the cheese off,
anything with batter on could well have milk in it and pastry will have butter.

Mashed potatoes are likely to have butter but you could provide school with a dairy free alternative for him.

Tomato based sauces on pasta will be OK, not pesto, lasagne, macaroni and cheese
Rice dishes should mostly be OK.

Crisps: stick to salted and salt and vinegar until you are more included to read every package.

In the first few weeks, he is unlikely to have significant issues with cross contamination due to for example, crisps made on a line that also has dairy flavourings on it.. but I am not an immunologist.

Do, however, get your GP to rule out gluten before you get too far down this route. Once you start to exclude anything, it become difficult to reintroduce until healing happens and also other reactions can become more intense.

For dinners Merridens do a dairy free Korma and Tikka Masala which are delicious. You can also get dairy free pesto sauce. Biscoff Lotus Biscuits are fine. Avoid beef hula hoops.

I found it easier to do online shopping at first to spend time looking at all the ingredients rather than being distracted in a supermarket.

Thanks for all the advice, I am now reflecting on his appointment this morning and thinking this is a bit of a random stab in the dark isn't it? Surely he could be allergic to anything, not just milk, and this should be undertaken with more expertise than just sending me off with the vague instructions of to try dairy free for two weeks! He was assuming I was savvy enough to do my own research as to what foods contain milk, not as simple as just cutting milk out. Obviously if its not done properly then there will be no change in him and we will assume he's not got a milk allergy but that may not be the case! I'm wondering if I should have asked for a referral? To where I don't know!

When it was thought DS had a dairy allergy, I had just started weaning him so was about 6 months old, I saw the GP who referred me to a paediatrician. They did offer a dietician if we wanted, which we didn't at the time and then luckily he outgrew the allergy. Maybe you can phone the GP and see if there is anyone you can see to get more advice.

One issue you may have is DS eating food that you are to aware off eg friend offering him to share crisps and your DS not knowing he shouldn't eat as not aware they might have milk in

Dairy free is not too hard if you can eat food that 'may contain' ie everything in my kitchen could be cross contaminated. You can easily buy dairy free biscuits from all the main supermarkets and Holland and Barrett have dairy free snacks etc. Food labelling in the UK is pretty good for dairy and as others have said oatly make the best milk. We have to avoid soya too most of the time, lots of people who can't have milk can't have soya too. Pure is a great margarine for everyday use and cooking.

School should be able to cope with a dairy free diet but as he's not old enough to ask questions reliability maybe packed lunches for two weeks while you have this trial. Good luck.

It’s worth noting that if it’s the milk protein that affects him, soya should be cut out as well. This is what we’ve had to do. Only thing that’s not eaten here is yogurt, ice cream, most chocolate and cheese. Bread is a bugger, as for some reason soya flour is used in most. Coop in store baked bread is fine, as is some of the Tesco finest range. Wraps and pittas are a good alternative. We use oatly, as others have suggested, and it’s now available in most supermarkets.

This isn't as hard as it looks at first. Labelling is great now.

For this trial period instead of looking at what you have and adapting it, shop just for him. Buy vegan foods- chocolate puddings, chocolate milk, biscuits etc are all available in vegan forms. Add in non processed meats (yes, ham or chicken nuggets can contain milk products), and lots of fruit and veg. Pasta, rice, potato for carbs.

Buy a vegan marg and be very careful with bread. Crackers may be easier.

Be careful when you go back to a normal diet- the reaction to milk may be more extreme than it is now!

You can look at the list of ingredients and anything milk-derived will be in bold so you can weed out things pretty quickly without going through every single E number and what-not.
Alpro chocolate desserts are lovely for a treat. Moo Free chocolate is lovely as well.
You could potentially ask for blood test for allergy - it will tell you exactly what protein is causing the allergy, if it is that. Any other test won't be as accurate, but some GPs prefer a less invasive approach (although it only takes 1ml blood for an allergy test)

YY to the post above about being careful with soya. V common to have issues with both.

My kids like flora dairy free

Well I can't get to the supermarket till tomorrow and our local shop didn't have any dairy free spread, and the only milk was soya or almond so I went for almond, it's unsweetened, it's horrifically vile! It tastes like thick water with a chemical element added. Is oatly any better?

Oatly is amazing in porridge.

There are so many dairy free alternatives in the shops but can I recommend you download the food maestro app I use it as my daughter is dairy free and it really helps. You just scan the barcode on the product your looking at and it tells you if it's suitable or not.

If you tell us what a normal week’s meals would look like, we can probably suggest work aroubda for most things. DS has been dairy free for 5 years and it’s fine once you are used to it

(work arounds even!)