A very Happy New Year to everyone out there in blogland.
New Year, new starts, and the second photo-less blog post from me in 3 months!
My biggest thing for this new year is to try and adapt to a new diet. Not a new diet as in a losing weight diet, but a new diet that excludes milk, milk products, egg/egg products, durum wheat and soya.
I got the results back yesterday of a food test that I had sent a sample of blood off for, and it came back with the info that I should avoid those items for 3 months, then try and reintroduce them slowly. There are other food items that I should only eat once every 3-4 days as I’m sensitive to them, including pineapple which I love, and kidney beans, which I’ve never been particularly partial to anyway but we’ve been eating a lot of in chilli lately.
Its amazing how many products have either milk, egg and soya in them. I went around the supermarket yesterday and had to read the bcak of every label, trying to figure out what i could and couldnt eat. The biggest problem for me is my breakfast. I have porridge almost every single morning, and never get sick of it, yet I hate making it with water, it has to be milk. I bought rice milk and goats milk yesterday and tried both in my cup of tea, in preparation for the porridge. The rice milk was pretty tasteless, looked as if you were just colouring the tea, and then only slightly. The goats milk, however, and surprisingly, wasnt too bad! So Ive had another cup of tea this morning with it and while its not quite the same as cows milk, its something that I could get used to. Phew. I also had a cinnamon and raisen bagel for breakfast this morning (not quite ready to try the goast milk in my porridge) and some olive oil spread (which disappointingly contains whey which is from milk, but it was the only spread that seemed close to containing no cows milk). Frustratingly, the ordinary plain bagels contain soya flour, as do most of the pitta breads that i looked at. Tortillas seem to be okay. It will be a learning curve.
Unfortunately, I can’t eat CHOCOLATE. AArgh. Dont know what I’m going to do there. Even the darkest most best chocolate seems to contain some form of milk in it. Or soya leithin, whatever that is, must research it more. So my untouched selection box will remain untouched for another few months and hope the mice (DH) doesnt get to it in the meantime…
I don’t like the sounds of that for the New Year. Good luck with that!
Comment by Bobbi — January 2, 2009 @ 12:41 am
Well, you have a challenge ahead of you, but living with 2 food allergy kids, you’ll figure it out over time. Any questions just give me a ring. Health food stores are good, but expensive. We shop the middle eastern shops with great success. Happy New Year.
Comment by Holly — January 2, 2009 @ 10:13 am
Goats’ milk is nice when you get used to the taste
It’s not as high in fat as cows’ milk and is supposed to be much higher in calcium! Tesco have their own line of ‘free from’ products that are gluten, wheat, egg and dairy free. They are generally cheaper and much better tasting than the more expensive alternatives. Some health food shops have loyalty cards so that if you’re shopping there regularly, you’ll get rewards. Hope this helps – it’s not easy sticking to a new diet, especially one that excludes all your favourite things!
Comment by Aileen — January 2, 2009 @ 10:55 am
Oh yuk, that sounds like a pain. Give me shout if you need any advice, D used to be vegan and his brother still is so dairy and egg free isn’t that alien to us. I drink Alpro (or Tesco) sweetened soya milk on my cereal or in tea anyway. There’s a brand of spread called ‘pure’ that is dairy free – one is soya based but they have a sunflower one that should be ok.
Chocolate wise Green & Black’s maya gold is dairy free, as are Frys creme bars.
Comment by Teaandcakes — January 3, 2009 @ 11:10 am