Now Dairy Free Too

[Nic]

The ped. gastro doctor said that he wants us to go dairy free with Jacob for the next 2 weeks to see if there is any improvement. I really need some help here as this is a kid who lives for dairy. Can some of you who are dairy free give me some tips as far as which are the best milk and ice cream brands? Are there any subsitutes for yogurt and cheese? I usually make him gluten free pizza for lunch, is that now out as there is no really good cheese substitute? And how about cooking with milk substitutes? He loves mashed potatoes. I am so stressed right now. This is actally going to be harder than taking the gluten. Please, any help will be appreciated.

Nicole

[Lisa]

Nicole:

I don't know if I can be of help, but I can bump it up for you.

There is soy milk and Smart Balance Butter Spread that it dairy free. It is available in most grocery stores. If I can find it here, it can be found anywhere.

Do a search here on this site as "Dairy Free" and see what you come up with, and, as surely others will post.

But, most importantly, take one step at a time. Take time to learn and then make changes.

And BREATH deeply.

Lisa

[HawkFire]

We are entirely dairy free as dairy is not good for you or anybody who is a human being. It is only good for cows, though, I wouldn't feed the hormone laced, antibiotic enriched slop they call milk to even a cow.

We use rice milk. I don't care what kind we use, but my oldest son prefers the brand at Wholefoods, made by WholeFoods.

My daughter uses Almond milk. She likes the unsweetened vanilla and chocolate flavors.

My other child likes them all.

I would suggest you give in and allow chocolate rice or almond milk during the transition.

We use coconut oil for butter and oil. My children like it on toast with a dash of sea salt. I do not like it on toast. I'm too old and used to the flavor of butter, I suppose. So I have peanut butter or a jam on my toast.

I use the coconut oil to grease pans for everything I would use butter or oil. I make all baked goods with coconut oil. I made chocolate chip cookies *gluten free Bob's red Mill brand- so good* last night for a sleepover two of my children are having tonight. You must add about a tablespoon and a half of water for each 1/4 cup of coconut oil you use as it has less moisture than butter. I use coconut oil for greasing pans of pancakes, for baking all my fish.

The only thing I do not like coconut oil in is my mashed potatoes. The rice milks are fine in mashed potatoes, but coconut oil is too coconutty for my mashed potatoes. You can do something like add minced garlic to the boiling potatoes, add sea salt, pepper, a dash of olive oil and rice milk. That's how I make them. I was trying to get them to taste like OutBack Steakhouse's Mashed potatoes... and they do. Very good

For cheese- I use nothing. There is nothing like cheese. I had a funeral, of sorts, for cheese and that's that.

I make tapioca rice pudding sometimes. It's just like pudding or yogurt when chilled. I've added all sorts of stuff to it- fruit, cocoa powder. Simply use rice milk to prepare it.

No ice cream. I find popsicles or shaved ice or frozen juice pops, or italian ices work. Frozen grapes are good. Frozen bananas are good. Somethings that are dairy cannot be replicated. It's sad, but dairy is so bad for you and the more you research it online at places like Notmilk.com you will see. There is absolutely no health benefits whatsoever from dairy. None. The so called benefits negate themselves with the other parts of the dairy.

[tarnalberry]

Soy milk or almond milk are what I use for cereal, pancakes, and baking. For smoothies and come other cooking, I use coconut milk. For mashed potatoes, I use broth, and waxy, not starchy, potatoes.

[Nic]

Soy milk or almond milk are what I use for cereal, pancakes, and baking. For smoothies and come other cooking, I use coconut milk. For mashed potatoes, I use broth, and waxy, not starchy, potatoes.

What are waxy potatoes ?

[chick2ba]

Nicole-

Dairy-free isn't as bad as I thought it would be. I've found substitutions for everything except ricotta cheese and heavy cream (although I bet powdered rice milk mixed up thick would work).

Butter- Earth Balance Buttery Sticks

Cheese- Galaxy Nutritional Foods Rice Shreds (they have cheddar and mozzarella flavors.. they melt great on hot food!!) GNF also has a soy Parmesan cheese that's not bad. I think Tofutti cheese slices are gross and don't melt well.

Ice cream- Lactose Free Breyer's (vanilla) or So Delicious (by Turtle mountain) or Tofutti

Sour cream- Tofutti "Sour Supreme" (Soy)

Cream cheese- Tofutti "Better than Cream Cheese" (soy; It works fine in cheesecake!)

Chocolate- Enjoy Life chocolate chips (morsels for baking, they are semi-sweet)

I'm not a big milk or yogurt fan, but I know rice milk and soy yogurt are easy to find. Tofutti should be gluten-free. For recipes (not desserts) that call for heavy cream, I normally just use Swanson canned chicken broth and melt in some GNF mozzarella 'cheese'. It tastes great with potatoes and adds more flavor than just water. Hope this helps.

[tarnalberry]

What are waxy potatoes ?

Idaho or russet potatoes are starchy potatoes. Yukon gold and red potatoes (for instance) are waxy potatoes. They have a different texture due to the differences in actual starches, and I find that the waxy kind (also sometimes called creamer potatoes) work best in mashed potatoes that don't use milk/cream/butter due to that texture difference.

[georgie]

No ice cream. I find popsicles or shaved ice or frozen juice pops, or italian ices work. Frozen grapes are good. Frozen bananas are good. Somethings that are dairy cannot be replicated. It's sad, but dairy is so bad for you and the more you research it online at places like Notmilk.com you will see. There is absolutely no health benefits whatsoever from dairy. None. The so called benefits negate themselves with the other parts of the dairy

I found I was so much healthier being Dairy Free that I didn't mind missing out. We make icecream from coconut cream and its great! And now I can have a little goats milk cheese and I don't seem to react as much.

[Nic]

Is a milk intolerance like gluten for a Celiac. For example, I was looking at the ingredient list on something this morning and it had way at the bottom of the list, "may contain 2% or less of: whey (and then some other things I didn't recognize). Is even 2% or less of whey not aloud? And how about chocolate candy? Is a hershys kiss out because it is made from milk chocolate? Sorry to sound so ignorant but I am to this diet.

Nicole

[hathor]

Yeah, you really do have to cut out everything with any milk protein in it. I'd been following a basically vegan diet for years. But I occasionally had milk chocolate, soy cheese with casein as an ingredient (my husband would just never check before buying it ), desserts with dairy on birthdays & Thanksgiving, and a bit of regular cheese maybe two or three times a year. That was enough to provoke antibodies in my system.

Here is a list for a milk allergy, but the principle is pretty much the same. Open Original Shared Link

Some say that ghee is OK for casein intolerants, though, since it is butter so clarified that there is no casein left. I haven't thoroughly researched this -- but I haven't cut out an occasional Indian meal either

Besides, you should go for chocolate, not chocolate candy As a friend of my daughter's once put it, dark chocolate is chocolate; milk chocolate is candy (said with a slight sneer). Discover the higher, purer joys of the good stuff

[Nic]

[besides, you should go for chocolate, not chocolate candy As a friend of my daughter's once put it, dark chocolate is chocolate; milk chocolate is candy (said with a slight sneer). Discover the higher, purer joys of the good stuff

[tarnalberry]

Good dark chocolate does not have milk in it. Some dark chocolate does, like hersheys, and even dove and ghiradelli, does have milk. Hersheys has skim milk powder, dove and ghiradelli has milk fat - the former is worse than the later if you've got a casein intolerance. (the ghiradelli statement is from memory - someone double check that?) Tropical Source, Dagoba, Green and Black (their gluten-free varieties), Theo, Pralus, and others are both better tasting, and dairy free. (I'm a chocolate snob too!

(We've been doing chocolate tasting on Thursday's as work - so far, the favorite seems to be either the Tropical Source w/ Mint or the Pralus Djakarta (75%). Not so many people (besides me) liked the Green & Black w/ Ginger.

[larry mac]

.....We've been doing chocolate tasting on Thursday's as work - so far, the favorite seems to be either the Tropical Source w/ Mint or the Pralus Djakarta (75%). Not so many people (besides me) liked the Green & Black w/ Ginger. .....

Dear Tiff,

What's this chocolate tasting on Thursdays at work all about? Is this something I should be doing? I've never heard of the chocolates you speak about. How do you select them? Thank you.

best regards, lm

[hathor]

It isn't an ignorant question, because some silly companies (like Hershey's) will put milk in dark chocolate. A desecration in my book!

The only way of knowing for sure is to check the ingredients. Good dark chocolate (in other words, the stuff I like ) won't have dairy in it. It will list the cacao percentage, too. I go for the highest I can get. But if you are just starting out, you would probably be happier with a lower percentage. Savor it slowly and enjoy!

[hathor]

(We've been doing chocolate tasting on Thursday's as work - so far, the favorite seems to be either the Tropical Source w/ Mint or the Pralus Djakarta (75%). Not so many people (besides me) liked the Green & Black w/ Ginger.

I could go for that kind of work

I think I would like the ginger one but it contains soy

For those who are interested, here is a chart Green & Black has the shows the presence or absence of gluten, dairy, soy, etc. in all their products:

Open Original Shared Link

The only bar, other than dark 85%, that doesn't contain soy is the mint -- and it contains gluten I will have to check to see if the soy is in the form of lecithin, which seems to be OK for me.

I checked the Tropical Source w/Mint and it contains soy flour. The Pralus Djakarta looks OK, though.

[tarnalberry]

Dear Tiff,

What's this chocolate tasting on Thursdays at work all about? Is this something I should be doing? I've never heard of the chocolates you speak about. How do you select them? Thank you.

best regards, lm

It's all about chocolate. And was totally made up. We went out to Dilletante (a local chocolate company) for hot chocolate at lunch, and someone made a comment about taste testing their chocolates, and I thought that'd it'd be fun to do a chocolate taste testing at work. Thursday just happened to be the first day I remembered to bring chocolate in. (We do one variety a week.)

I have always been the one to bring them in so far, and I select them by going to the store (I picked up a big batch at Whole Foods, I'll be branching out in the future), and seeing what I like. That's all there is to it. It's really not formal at all - it's just an excuse to eat chocolate at 9 in the morning with your coworkers, and then another piece at noon, and three...

I could go for that kind of work

I think I would like the ginger one but it contains soy

For those who are interested, here is a chart Green & Black has the shows the presence or absence of gluten, dairy, soy, etc. in all their products:

Open Original Shared Link

The only bar, other than dark 85%, that doesn't contain soy is the mint -- and it contains gluten I will have to check to see if the soy is in the form of lecithin, which seems to be OK for me.

I checked the Tropical Source w/Mint and it contains soy flour. The Pralus Djakarta looks OK, though.

You're right - finding chocolate without soy is hard. Open Original Shared Link (a Seattle brand) doesn't use soy.

Open Original Shared Link (a French brand) doesn't either. (You can get both at Open Original Shared Link.)

[flowergirl]

The only bar, other than dark 85%, that doesn't contain soy is the mint -- and it contains gluten I will have to check to see if the soy is in the form of lecithin, which seems to be OK for me.

Open Original Shared Link is the only chocolate that I can eat because it doesn't contain milk or soy lecithin. And only in small amounts.

[hathor]

Open Original Shared Link is the only chocolate that I can eat because it doesn't contain milk or soy lecithin. And only in small amounts.

Have you found that you do react to soy lecithin? I ask because Enterolab told me they thought it would be OK. I've seen the same elsewhere on the internet. Of course, this doesn't work if one is allergic, rather than intolerant.

I checked the ingredients list and it looks like they have some other products that don't have dairy or soy as well: Open Original Shared Link Or has your experience been different in looking at actual bars? The cayenne bar does sound good, though.

If you order something else, be careful about the Organic Expressions bar. It contains lupin flour. I recently had some gluten-free pasta with this ingredient and had a reaction like I do to soy, if not stronger. From research, I've found that many who react to peanut or soy also react to this. Indeed, the European Union has just promulgated a new rule that says that lupin is another allergen that labels must list. (The rule isn't in effect yet.) Lupin is a relatively new ingredient and apparently is being added to all sorts of things in Europe and Australia now.

[hathor]

You're right - finding chocolate without soy is hard. Open Original Shared Link (a Seattle brand) doesn't use soy.

Open Original Shared Link (a French brand) doesn't either. (You can get both at Open Original Shared Link.)

Oooh, I've tried Michel Cluizel before -- the single source sampler. This was from a catalog of assorted merchandise. I've taken to ordering these samplers for my kids for Christmas; it is the one thing they always say they want. Knowing what is good for them, they will share with me It is nice to know how I can order a wider variety. I never googled this before, perhaps fearing the result on my waistline

I'll have to check out Theo as well. Thanks!