Soya Milk Questions

LooniesMum

Yes my son had Neocate too - it's one of very few specialised formulas containing protein only in its 'building blocks' form (amino acids), so there's nothing to react to basically. My son is fine with milk now fortunately. However I have several food allergies (of the true and dangerous kind) and have been avoiding milk(and wheat and egg) for 20 years. There's so much more out there now than 20 years ago - a whole variety of sheep and goat's cheese, goat's cream even!

Tesco also do a dairy free baking margarine (solid block type) which is OK and freezes, and some supermarkets sell the kosher margarine Tomor which again is good for baking.

westcoastscot

Hi LooniesMum, totally understand where you're coming from - my son was prescribed wysoy when he was a baby but wasnt thriving on it (and neither was I) so I went vegan for the duration so I could continue breast feeding. He has serious life-threatening allergies including dairy (sheep and goat milk included) and eggs, but manages it very well. He's 17 now and is very careful, and as a family we eat "his" diet, apart from the cows milk that i now have in my tea and on my cereal.
WCS

tandraig

I can only tell you about when my son was three and having severe asthma attacks - I suspected dairy and cut it out of his diet. much to the disgust of his gp, his consultant, his HV and almost everyone else in the NHS! this was about 25 years ago though! and i was proved right about 7 years later when he finally had allergy tests - he WAS allergic to dairy! along with several other things i never even suspected!
these days there is more advice out there on internet - I wish I had had that!
soya milk is so easy to come by these days - most supermarkets stock it - that i am wondering why you are considering the long life one?
my son could tolerate goats milk in small quantities and enjoyed an occasional goats milk yoghurt or cheese (but we had to travel about 20 miles to get these for him)
oh and the NHS were insistent that i was depriving him of much needed calcium (and they didnt provide the milk substitutes they do today) but he recently had bone density tests and they were absolutely fine!

I did find a cookbook which dealt with dairy intolerance and learned a lot - but, there are better ones out there I am sure - look on amazon they got loads.
and - read labels of foods and look for the 'hidden' dairy. you will be amazed at which foods it sneaks into.
this allergy isnt one which gets a lot of press - but the info is out there - you just got to look for it!

LooniesMum

Yes and these days the soya milk is calcium enriched too. There are of course other dietary sources of calcium (sardines, pilchards, sesame seeds) though not so rich as milk. Cow's milk wasn't really designed for human babies though; one could start a whole other argument on whether we need to drink it at all and indeed in some parts of the world they don't continue to drink milk beyond infancy! But that's another story....

paulwf

Honeyapple wrote: »

Does anyone have a good recipe for a Dairy free birthday cake.

Thank you

There is a book called Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World...the results are so good we've had loads of non-vegans asking us for the recipes or even buying the book. Cupcakes work well as they rise easily and you can choose different decorations, however I've used the same recipes to make larger cakes...just adapt the baking time accordingly.

There are non-dairy substitutes for just about everything now and the quality gets better and better all the time, I don't find being vegan any bother at all so just being dairy free should be easy

Honeyapple

Thank you so much for all your replies, still getting through them all.

We are currently waiting for a paediatrician appointment for DD, to get the correct dietary advice. I spoke to one health visitor who simply said cut out all forms of dairy. Not really what I wanted to hear. Another health visitor said that needs to see a paed and that she couldnt tell me what to give her. So I have been back and forth to health visitors and doctors and its just a nightmare. DD was prescribed Enfamil which is a lactose free baby formula, but after having had three prescriptions for it the doctors then decided that it was too expensive for them and said to put her try and experiment with different milks eg soya, goats milk. We have stuck to Soya for the moment and we have seen some improvement. I try to keep her diet dairy free but I am amazed at how many things have milk hidden in them.

The reason for asking about the longlife milk was I didnt really know what the difference was.

I have made some rice pudding with soya milk which she loves although my DS hates it! I think I will just have a little experiment with the cakes and baking side of it. It just seems as soon as you mention dairy free the price goes up.

Its hard to know what to give as snacks because with my DS it would be chunks of cheese or cheese straws. Think I will check out amazon for some books and have a browse round the net to see what I can find.

westcoastscot

Hi,
Cant really help with snacks for an 11 month old, mine were still breastfed then and weren't really snacking on anything other than banana. for older children hummus and veg sticks is good, rice cakes, fruit, cereal that kind of thing.
Rice pudding with soya milk is different - it's more like "normal" if you use vanilla sugar
WCS

kafkathecat

The alpro website says their milk is fine from 6 months but shouldn't be the sole source of milk until a child is 2 as it is low in fat.
I am vegan and my son was vegan until he was 9 and discovered cheese. I think I gave him soya formula after I stopped breastfeeding, it was a long time ago!
K.

Pitlanepiglet

For snacks I'd also suggest, veg sticks, bits of fruit, dried fruit etc (watch for a reaction to sulphur on dried fruit - I rinse non organic food with hot water to remove some of the sulphur).

I think you need to see a dietician/paediatrician to get a good feel for what you should be feeding her. I wouldn't worry for the next few weeks about her calcium levels, if you have a google there are many other foods that are high in calcium and you can always give her a calcium supplement (subject to what your GP says obviously).

I'm not convinced that we or even babes entirely NEED dairy products, there are many cultures where it's not the norm to feed cows milk. It takes some getting used to and in time you'll find out what her tolerance levels are and you'll work out whether she's OK on shop bough biscuits etc.

What sort of reaction is she getting?

My nephew who is also dairy intolerant and was diagnosed around 12 months old was a really sickly child, lots of colic, no weight gain and very weezy , strangely he could eat cooked cheese but not raw. He is 20 now and only occasionally reacts to dairy and eats a fairly normal diet - he wouldn't drink a pint of milk but he does have it on cereal.

You will be fine with this, you'll get used to it, babe will work it out - my nephew seemed to just know what he could and couldn't eat he used to say "me no" when offered something milky and he would pat his chest to show his weezing.

LooniesMum

Snacking shouldn't be a worry on a dairy free diet (my snacks have to be wheat egg and dairy free, and so were my DS1's for the first 18 months of his life - he's now completely 'free range' lucky thing!).

Anyway, fruit (slices of banana, dried apricot, raisins, banana chips), rice cakes, breadsticks (which leave deep piles of crumbs in the back of your car!!), fruit bars ("School bars" from Tesco, slightly dearer Lyme Regis ones, Humzingers and the Organix ones - some have yoghurt in but there's plenty without). Also home made flapjack and "tray bake" fruit bar type things. Nairns plain oatcakes were for some reason treasured by my boys just as much as a biscuit, and they come in little packs of 5 - great for your handbag or changing bag as an emergency snack. We made lots of homemade biscuits at that stage - gave us total control over the ingredients and DS1 enjoyed helping (i.e. eating the raw dough!). Both my DSs loved the Organix tomato 'crisps' (used to be called Noughts & Crosses but I think they might be stars these days) - I used to cringe at the cost but they were very useful during the difficult stage of avoiding lots of potential allergens, which happened to coincide with DS1 insisting on feeding himself and making missiles out of anything we tried to help him with.

Hope that helps. My boys are now 6 and 4; the whole thing is a bit less stressful when they are toddlers and you are less fearful of any wrong move affecting their development. Once they are walking and talking, doodling and riding a trike, you worry less, by which I mean you are more concerned with healthy eating and avoiding what they are allergic to, and less terrified that if you get it wrong they won't make it to grammar school! Hope that makes sense