How do you make a dairy-free diet appealing for a 2 yr-old? Paediatric
dietitian, Dave Swain, has some words of advice.
Raisingkids member's problem My 2 yr-old has IBS (Irritable Bowel
Syndrome). She has to have a dairy-free diet but dislikes most things
she's able to eat. Her diet lacks variety and so she gets bored with it
easily.
Please could you suggest some dairy-free foods
she may like as I've run out of ideas and fear she isn't eating properly!
Dave's
advice
My first bit of advice would be to get a referral to a State Registered
Paediatric Dietitian if you haven't already. You can do this via your
GP, or Paediatric Doctor, if your daughter has been referred to a specialist.
They'll be able to give you milk-free diet sheets, see if your daughter's
having enough calcium in her diet and generally review her growth and
macro and micronutrient intakes.
One
thing you can do straight away is contact your local supermarket and ask
for a list of all their milk-free manufactured products. You can also
contact food companies, who will send you lists of their own milk-free
products. This is the only way to ensure that a foodstuff is milk-free
and you'll find there are a number of products suitable for your daughter
- for instance, a number of plain chocolate bars don't contain milk!Following
a milk-free diet shouldn't be too restrictive, however you do need to
look at labels for hidden dairy products.
Products
that need to be avoided include:
All
types of milk
(... skimmed, semi-skimmed, evaporated and condensed)
Milk
powder
Milk
solids
Non-fat
milk solids
Cream
Yoghurt
Artificial
cream
Butter
and margarine
Lactose
Whey
and hydrolysed whey
protein
Casein
and hydrolysed
casein
Caseinate
Products
that are suitable include:
Soya
milk, rice milk and oat milk
(... try and get the calcium-fortified variety if possible and speak
to a dietitian to see if your daughter needs a calcium supplement)
Some
soya cheese
(... but check label as most varieties contain casein)
Dairy-free
or soya margarines
(e.g. Pure, Vitaquell, Granose or supermarket 'own' brands of soya margarine)
Soya
yoghurt
(e.g. Granose, Yofu or Provamel)
Dairy-free
ice-creamand s>oya
ice-cream
Fresh meat
(... sausages, beefburgers, ham and other processed meat often contains
milk)
Fresh
fish
Fresh
fruit and vegetables
Pure
fruit juice and fruit squash
Most
breads, and breakfast cereals
(e.g. Weetabix, Shredded Wheat, Cornflakes, Branflakes, and Ready Brek,
plus porridge andrice)
Plain (i.e. not stuffed) pasta
Sugar, honey,treacle and carob
Plain
chocolate and soya chocolate
(... but check the label)
Most
plain crisps
Jelly
NB
Keep up-to-date with ingredients
Manufacturers regularly change the ingredients of products and thus
you need to send off for new milk-free food lists on a regular basis.
At time of writing, all the above products were milk-free, however this
may not be the case if ingredients are changed.
To conclude, following a milk-free diet need
not be too limiting and a dietitian will be able to give you recipes and
literature to help. It may take time to know which foods are milk free
but with the lists from the supermarkets, shopping should be made easier.
