eating out

[aprilgrace]

hello all, I am new to this dairy free life and just wanted to share some experiences.

I have been told by various doctors for 15 years now that i have IBS, all drugs having no affect at all!! Since turning 30 I thought it was time to sort it out myself, last week I had a food sensitivity test and guess what.......severe dairy intolerance(and tomato just to make my diet really exciting!)

So, I dont really feel much improved yet, but something is going on(wont go into gory details) but I am determined to carry on.

Eating out seems most tricky, as most big chains can`t cope with you asking for ingredients and the people in the queue can be very impatient.

Anyway this site is good and it good to read other peoples experiences and views.


Bye for now.

April x

[Lan]

Hi Aprilgrace,

My name is Lan an I am the websites owner. I am glad to see that you are finding this website useful.

I do agree with you most definitely about the eating out part, especially about the people in the queue. I have had people tutting and whispering, and I would hold my head down ashamed. Now though I hold my head high and ignore them, as we are unable to help having these intolerances/allergies. If they are too ignorant and impatient to wait a little bit longer, then they deserve to wait for as long as possible.

Sorry for the strong words, but I feel very strongly on this matter.

I wish you all the luck for the future, and any help you need please post in the forums or send me a private message. I will help in anyway I can.

Good Luck.

Lan. :D

[Copper]

I have finally managed to meet a friend for lunch and not suffer afterwards. I smiled sweetly and asked for the black coffee to be watered down. I was then able to add my own lactose reduced milk :) I found a large sticky bun which filled me up until I got home. Apart from doughnuts everything else was full of cream or cheese!

[Pam]

Not everybody's idea of good food, but MacDonalds have a very informative web site with extensive ingredients lists and free from tables.

Greggs bakers were also very helpful when I wrote to them asking which of their products were dairy free.

I think the thing to do is plan ahead and try to contact someone high up in the restaurant chain to ask about their products.

Pizza Hut pizza's are supposed to be vegan, but this isn't much good to you if you are tomato intolerant too!

Chinese food is probably a good option as the chinese do not generally use milk in their food and tomatoes are few and far between too.

[Lan]

Hi Pam,

Have to admit I would be a bit dubious about eating at MacDonalds, but will check out their website later. As to Pizza Hut, I will try and find out some information on that.

I'm glad you had luck with Greggs, as they never replied to the many e-mails I sent. I know the local Greggs has dairy free doughnuts but when I asked about them I was told there was none there, and they have to be ordered.

However when I looked at where they should have been I was able to see, that contamination would have been very easy. The reason being they are stored amongst the dairy products.

I have tried chinese food and had no problems apart from bloating, from eating too much (LOL). The only thing I would suggest avoiding is the sweet and sour meal, as the chicken balls are covered in batter, which I truely believe contains some sort of dairy. Was not very well after eating them.

Hope all is well with everyone.

Lan. :D

[Bumble Bee]

I too am seriously challenged by tomatoes as well as dairy. I love Italian food, but find few selections on a menu that are without tomatoes or cheese.

My only solution is to eat something not quite as enfoyable as eggplant parmesan or pasta with marinara sauce.

just venting...thanks so much

[Nic]

I find that Japanese, Thai, noodle bars and other Asian restaurants are very good for eating out dairy free. Normally there isn't anything on the menu (except possibly some puddings) that has dairy in it. I do live in London, which helps a lot with the options, though.

Also, quite a few Indian restaurants near me do 'pure vegetarian' (vegan) options - again, this may just be because its a very multi-ethnic neighbourhood, but I find they are really good at identifying things I can eat.

On Italian, Pizza Express does some nice salads (their salad Nicoise is lovely) and perhaps those without the tomato would work? Last time I checked, their dressing is non-dairy. Some Italian restaurants (my local one, Strada etc) also do things like steak, or fish, and having those with no sauce and no butter on the veg should be OK.

The only places I completely avoid are French restaurants, after a couple of bad experiences where there was nothing non-dairy on the menu and the adaptations I asked for didn't happen, so I couldn't eat anything at all.

I hope some of these ideas help. Welcome to the site.

Nic

[linny]

Hi all,
Went to Burger King at the weekend and they no longer do their chicken Whopper which was dairy free. I had a Chicken Royale (that should have been dairy free) but was ill about 2 hours after it. When I looked on their site for ingredients they stated that it was 'under review' Um!!

[Copper]

Oh no!!! Sorry to hear you were "poisoned" by Burger King. I hope that you are feeling better now. Why do these people not understand how important this is to us?

I really don't want to eat out at all.

[matt]

that'll be why i always do it at a supermarket and buy basic stuff fresh then eat t like that. ie pack of ham and crisps while daughter has meal in cafe.

[rebecca c]

I had very few problems on holiday, managed not to lose any weight. We did self catering and ate out a few times, because of this website I felt more confident in pointing out my requirements and had some success and some nice meals. There was still one restaraunt where I was afraid to ask and the motorway service station on the way home had absolutely nothing I could eat except crisps.

Marks and Spencers at the service station on the way up was a godsend - fresh healthy food and I have discovered new gluten free treat - popadoms!! As usual I go overboard and eat too many.

[PinkyPrincess]

We went away to Wales a few weeks ago and I was surprised at how helpful people were, there were 2 cafes in a tiny town who provided soya milk, and the waitresses in the restaurants we went to were really helpful and just checked with the chefs about whether I could have things.

Poppadums are great aren't they, a really tasty snack which I can have.

Also I thought I should mention Asda's gluten wheat and dairy free 'Bakers Delight' chocolate cake bars, they are individually wrapped so good for snacks at work, and they taste lovely!

I've also been munching on Premier half chocolate coated biscuits which I found at my health food store. They are £2.50 for a pack of about 8 which is quite pricey, but they are so nice and don't taste dairy free at all.

Pinky

[matt]

your being done. you can get the premier non choc for £1.35 from holland and barrett and i think they do the choc ones for less than £2. look around and you should find them cheaper.

[cnc]

Having spent the last fortnight eating out for both lunch and dinner, I'm still as nervous as ever about eating out. In Britain I have found that its the medium priced restaurants that are the most helpful. I did have some very positive experiences though, waitresses would go and check bread and things like that for me and in one place I discovered that the waitress was lactose intolerant and so asked what she eats at that the restaurant safely, so that was quite good, I got something different from plain chicken and chips!! I think I probably had more sucess in America as the staff are reliant on tips and an unhappy/unwell customer is not going to tip well!
The plane food was 'interesting' and when I wake up a bit more (I landed at 7am this morning, having been on an overnight flight and not slept!), I will be complaining to Virgin- my return main meal was provided with 3 things that contained dairy in them, so I refused to eat my main meal as I wasn't convinced after that, and they also provided a roll, which on previous experience of American bread decided not to eat that either! They also offered me chocolate as a snack, and provided me with a cucumber and tomato sandwich (not my idea of good food at all!) with some random spread on it, so that had to go back as well....

[Bet]

Sounds like you had same probs as my daughter with Virgin food - they gave her a normal roll, but ahead of everyone elses dinner so thought it would be milk / soya free but obviously wasnt. The 'butter' spread had soya in it and on the journey out they didnt even seem to be aware of her soya intolerance. The roll she had on the way home also had some sort of spread in it which probably wasnt ok and just salad stuff - not the sort of roll a typical 5 yr old would eat. Cant say I was over impressed either.

Hope you had a good holiday - look forward to hearing more about it soon when the jetlag has subsided!

[Lan]

Hi Claire.

Welcome back. When you ae over the jet lag, will have to let us know how it all went. Looking forward to seeing the photos.

Take care,


Lan. :D:D:D

[cnc]

I'm not actually jet lagged at the moment, overnight flight means I didn't notice it as much, will probably start a new thread, or resurrect an old one, so I don't hijack anything else. :)

[Pam]

Welcome back Claire, hope you had a good time, can't wait to hear all about it.

[cnc]

Ok here goes, a very potted diary of my trip.
Visited lots of theme parks, 8 I believe, and visited some of them 3/4 times! We managed to visit 3 theme parks in one day :) Think we made at least 20 visits to theme parks in 14 days, and 2 mall visits as well.
Food was ok although fairly limited.
I met lots of the disney characters (the only reason to go to DisneyWorld in my opinion)
I also met spiderman, and scooby doo in other theme parks.
Fed and stroked dolphins (soooo very cute), fed seals, got up close to impalas and fed them, and I storked and fed a giraffe as well (got my hand licked by both the impala and the giraffe, they both have grey tongues).
Saw lots of animals, and walked miles. We were asleep by about 10/10.30 every night!
Went waterskiing, kneeboarding and wakeboarding, was much better at the first two as I snowboard with the wrong foot forward and everything is set up for the majority, so failed to amster the complication of turning as I stood up :D

Have got a lovely cuddly eeyore that was bought for me as well (I wanted it, but was being good and not buying it, and then it was bought for me :) )
I can provide further details if required, although I would hate to bore you all.

[linny]

If anyone is interested I've just found the BK ingredients list

http://www.bk.com/Food/Nutrition/NutritionInfo/index.aspx

then click on allergens.

[Bet]

Thanks for this Linny. When we were going on holiday in the summer we stopped at a motorway service station and ate at burger king. Dont normally go there but was surprised to see their allergy list was actually mounted on the wall for all to see. Lately when I have visited Mucdonalds the staff dont seem to even know they have such a thing let alone be able to produce one for me!

[cnc]

I will eat at BK, but won't eat at McD's. I try and avoid eating at BK as much as possible but needs must.

Linny has the list changed much from last time or not?

[PinkyPrincess]

This is really helpful thanks!

[linny]

Whoops, I've made a huge mistake as when I read the menu I printed I realised it is the USA list, so destroy all traces of it, unless you're hopping over to the US for a break!!!:( Sorry to waste your time folks.

[PinkyPrincess]

Ah, not to worry.
Here's the UK site: http://www.burgerking.co.uk/nutrition/index.aspx but they don't have all the info up yet. Might be worth an email.
Pinks