Lactose Intolerant - Help please

[jimmyjamas]

Hi. Following on from my Dairy Intolerance thread www.mumsnet.com/Talk?topicid=138&threadid=374792&stamp=070820202824. I have been told I am Lactose Intolerant by my GP.

Can anyone recommend any good websites about this condition and also recommend any interesting foods I can eat. There is so much I can't eat, including crisps, cakes, biscuits (all my fav), at least I should lose weight .

Thanks for any help.

Why can't you eat crisps?

There is lactose in most crisps. I think The plain Doritos crips are ok (no lactose)

Really? Kettle chips are fine, I'm pretty sure.

I'm dairy free as bf ds who is allergic and although had a hard time giving up cheese and yoghurt now find there's not that much I miss. I've found the key is to cook everything from scratch and just use vegan substitutes for the ingredients that cause problems.

hth...

I've been vegan on and off for years so I'm pretty good at avoiding lactose. Most crisps are ok, depending on the flavour (cheese & onion obviously is off the menu). More potato-y crisps (like Kettle chips as Ib says) tend to be fine. It's the more processed ones like Pringles that tend to have more odd ingredients including milk products.

Check out a good health food shop. You'll be surprised how many tasty things there are that you can still eat. For example, there's a range of cookies called Nanas cookies which are all dairy free and really tasty. Alpro soya drinks and desserts are nice too.

Honestly, it's not as bad as it seems. It just takes a bit of getting used to.

Oh, and most big supermarkets do a "free from" range which has lactose free biscuits and desserts and stuff.

Thanks. Do Holland and Barratt do free from foods? There is one in my town.

One thing I will miss the most is my pasta dishes with cream and mushroom. I love anything creamy.

Pasta is dairy free isn't it?

Holland & Barrett definitely do some free from stuff. They don't have the most amazing selection so it might be worth investigating to see if there's a nicer health food shop in your town. If not, H&B is definitely better than nothing. I'm pretty sure they do vegan biscuits (including custard creams). If you like creamy things, Alpro do a soya 'cream', as well as soya custard and all sorts of soya milks and puddings. It might get a bit of getting used to as it obviously doesn't taste exactly the same as the real thing but it's not bad. The custard tastes a lot like normal custard actually.

Maybe you should check out some vegan/lactose free cook books or websites for some inspiration. There are lots of things you can cook that are tasty and creamy if you know how (coconut cream is quite a good starting point for getting creamy flavour in savoury dishes like curries).

Look on the bright side, there's lots of evidence that a dairy free diet is really healthy and good for you

Pasta is fine, but parmesan is not which has ended up meaning I don't eat as much of it.

If you are OK with eggs, carbonara makes a creamy-ish type sauce.

Dh tried his best to get creative with rice milk (thickened with cornflour or some such) and managed some passable attempts but tbh it wasn't wonderful, just reminded me of what I couldn't have. So now we have explored cuisines that naturally have more dairy free stuff, japanese, chinese, lebanese, moroccan, etc.