New here:-)

[Jingyd]

Hello,

I am 30 years old, found out recently I am dairy intolerant after suffering fall my life with stomach pains, acid, trapped wind and sinusitis.

I had an electronic allergy test done which I was abit worried about having done, not knowing if they were accurate or not. Has anyone else had this form of testing done? I was amazed that tomatoes, citrus fruit and pork showed I had an intolerance/allergy to because I knew I did, I have always suffered badly after eating these foods, but I was very suprised when dairy was shown.

I was told to cut out all dairy, goats cheese also showed as being a problem for me:confused:

I am not sure how I am going to cope to be honest as dairy is a huge part of my diet, always has been. I am underweight aswell (6 & half stone) and struggle to gain weight, wondering if now I am going to lose even more:(

Any advice please?

[Copper]

Welcome to the site. People often lose weight when they have intolerances as their systems are so upset that they are not getting enough nutrients from their food.

It is hard to go on a dairy free diet when you are new to it but it does get easier.

First of all you need to print the list of alternative names for milk from this page on this site

http://www.dairyfreeuk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=738

Then allow yourself plenty of time for shopping as you will need to check the ingredient labels for hidden milk.

To get you started on the basics: -

Margarine - use Vitalite or Pure as they are dairy free

Milk - this will be a case of try some and see what you think about the taste. You can try soya milk, the long life version is usually found with the long life milks, fresh is found in the chiller. Oat milk (Oatly) is found with the long life milks. Rice milk which in my Tesco is on the Free from shelf.

Cream - some Tesco stores here sell Oatly cream which is very nice. There is also a soya based cream. These are found in the long life milk section in Tesco.

Ice cream - Swedish Glace is a soya based ice cream which is very nice. Tesco here only sell the vanilla flavour. Other flavours can be found in health food shops if they have a freezer. This ice cream should be easy to find as the box is black and is an octagon (8 sides).

Cakes - you will be hard pressed to find any dairy free ones on a supermarket shelf. I bake my own.

Biscuits - I know that these are dairy free, Party Rings, Tesco cheap digestives, Tesco Fair Trade chocolate chip cookies and Jacobs lemon puffs.

Crisps - many have added lactose which helps to stick the flavouring I believe. I am currently eating Kettle sea salt and balsamic vinegar crisps as they are dairy free.

Cheese - there is no hard cheese replacement that tastes like cheese. Many are based on soya. I have only seen these in health food shops here in Poole. I am a bit out of touch with these as I have developed a soya intolerance so I can't eat them any more :( Some of the soft spread cheese alternatives were very nice. They were made by Tofutti.

This is the site for Toffuti so you can see what they make

http://www.tofutti.com/ts.shtml

If you are into cooking something quick and easy then Tesco own battered cod (in a red box) is dairy free. Birds Eye chicken pies are dairy free.

There is a chance that you might develop an intolerance to soya so try not to replace all dairy with soya.

I hope that you feel better after seeing this list. You will not starve :) Please keep in touch. If there is any food you would like to replace do ask and we will do our best to help.

[rebecca c]

Welcome to the site, some good advice from Copper there not sure I can do better than that.

I find plain crisps and home made cakes (with pure) are good for putting on weight when I need to!

I have other intolerences too so tend to avoid any thing premade except doves farm biscuits.

Good luck, remember to tempt you appetite with lovely fresh fruits and vegetable too.

[Jingyd]

Hello,

Thank you both so much, I really appreciate your help, I feel so much better about things now. I shall be doing more baking in the future:D

Do you think the electronic way of testing is accurate? I had not heard of it but a friend went and she had a dairy intolerance and it changed her life when she cut it out. It is strange that it picked up pork and the other things that i know I feel ill after eating. I just never thought of dairy, my 3 year old daughter has a problem with dairy aswell, and my son did as a baby.

[Copper]

I listened to a radio prog recently where medical experts said that there are no satisfactory tests for intolerances. They can test for lactose intolerance and coeliac. For others they have to listen to the patients and then use the food diary and elimination diet to find the problem.

In other words you take a food out of your diet and see how you feel. Then if you are no better you put that food back in and repeat with another suspect food. There are the usual suspects such as dairy, eggs, wheat and gluten.

Some of us here like to be different and have problems with foods like coconut, soya and citrus fruits as well as dairy!

[rebecca c]

In my opinion I would not trust a test for intolerences. Allergy doctors at Guys told me that there is no way of testing for intolerences.

Even the coeliac test is a difficult one if like me you have already cut most gluten out of your diet before you have the test and different doctors have different ideas about how long you should eat gluten before the test and how many biopsy sites should be sampled.

Just my opinion though. I have found my way to better (not good) health by experimenting with cutting things and and seeing if there is an improvement.

[Jingyd]

Thank you for your help.

I found alot of good dairy free substitutes in Tesco yesterday:D so far I am managing but am craving cottage cheese and babybels, lol!

I am just wondering whether it is worth me doing if the electronic allergy tests are not accurate at all? the thing that made me believe them was that it picked up that I couldn't tolerate pork, onions & tomatoes, all things I know I react to, I was shocked when dairy came up though.

[Copper]

The best way to see if you have a problem with dairy is to exclude it totally from your diet for a month and see if you feel better.

By the time I realised I was lactose intolerant I was quite ill so a dairy free diet made me feel better within two weeks.

[Jingyd]

Thanks.

I suffer with stomach aches and wind everyday of my life and stuffy nose/sinus pains. Could it really be causing this? I thought it was just allergies that caused these kind of nasal symptoms?

[Azuna]

I hate those sort of symptoms too, Jingyd, which is one of the reasons I've gone dairy free. As well as the advice above (what an excellent reason to eat crisps and homemade cake!) make sure you use generous amounts of good oils when cooking, and eat plenty of nuts.