How do you cope with dairy-free diet for an underweight child?

[Swoop]

More fantastic advice, thanks so much faithful mamma for taking the time to give me all that info!

It's a shame about the cheese - DD is a cheese addict!

One of my concerns is that so many dairy free options are made with soy, and I remember reading on here a while ago that there are issues with giving soy to kids. I can't remember the details, I'll have a look back and see what I can find...

[LisaBear]

Hi
My ds1 is dairy, peanut and egg allergic

I use meadow Lea dairy free marg, tastes MUCH beter than nuttelex.*
Can she have eggs? That will help bulk her up
carbs are good too most pastas dont have milk

There. Is two cake mixes I have found that don't have milk, safeway select brand and the woolworths brand in plastic bags y your feet in the isle. It's cheap and really yummy
I don't believe his stuff about it's dangerous to feed kids soy,,, the Chinese have lived off soy for, well forever....
My son has been on soy since 5 months. It's all he knows.*

The main thing about dairy is that it's sneaking put into products, soy cheese has dairy proteins in it and whey powder is used as a filler in aOt of foods.*
There are alot of packet mixes for things *like apricot chicken and shepherds pie out there without dairy and the health cos isle has great things

My son has milk flavor straws to flavor the soy. They have no artificial flavors and no preservatives. They are inthe milk additive section. ( I she doesn't like the taste of soy)

Try mixing stewed/ fresh fruit into the vanilla soy yogurt

And you can gt gelativo gelati at the supermarket for frozen treats

Good luck and I hoPe you get an answer sOon
Sent from my iPhone

[Aligater]

Hi I have the same problem with my 15 month old DD but for a long time she also couldnt have wheat have just reintroduced that untill we get test results back. My DD is on mostly rice milk and I use the sunflower spread and tahinni as the diatician recomended these as higher in calcium and protien for good weight gain

[Traveller]

My youngest is dairy intolerant and I follow much of the advice given above, but in addition I found dairy free yoghurts difficult and expensive to source so I bought a heap of small plastic tubs and fill them with fruit (usually tinned peaches) and jelly. They have about the same amount of sugar as a yoghurt but no dairy and are handy for lunchboxes, picnics, etc.

[Swoop]

Thanks girls, this is all great info.

Aligater, how did they test for the intolerance? I am just guessing that's what the problem is here, knowing that dairy intolerance often goes hand in hand with reflux, and she keeps having a few days every couple of weeks where she does poos like chopped spinach!

[studentmum]

I know this is an old thread but consider it a bump.

We have recently learnt a lot about dairy and its so called 'good' - 3 of the 6 of us have issues tolerating dairy so last year we decided enough was enough. While on our dietary reform we also decided to do away with meat and only occaisionally have fish.

We rarely eat any processed foods, have a huge amount of legumes, nuts and whole grains compared to before and eat and drink plenty of soy. The concern with soy is for under 2 year olds it cannot be used as a milk substitute i.e. Babies cannot drink full bottles of Soya milk in replacement if breast milk or formula bottles (*Soy milk based formulas are made for dairy intolerant bottle fed bubs*)

Far from losing weight our main concern (Daddy!) has put on a bit of healthy weight. looks 5 years younger at least and has not had any major depressive episodes since the dietary change. Our 2 children (both of whom have always been in the underweight category) are tolerating ALL food far better than before and the younger one has started gaining weight slowly (about 1.5kg in 4 months for the 2.5yr old) the 11yr old has not gained weight but is feeling healthier and not complaining of stomach pain, which was previously so accute it lead to many tests including an endoscopy.

I have lost more than 10kg since changing our diet which for a very obese person has been very encouraging, even with a back injury (meaning limited to no movement) I continued to lose weight.

We found a lot of conflicting opinion on the net about getting rid of dairy but two things I found very good were the new "Healthy Eating Plate" by Harvard school of Public Health - Healthy Eating Plate - The Nutrition Source - Harvard School of Public Health It states "Limit milk/dairy" and is not included 'on' the plate as such.

And by far the most convincing and researched info we came across was by Amazing Discoveries and it is a (long) video called Udderly Amazing - 304 - Udderly Amazing - Amazing Discoveries TV If you need to justify your dairy rejection to anyone this is the way to back it up, it is worth the long watch. They have quite a few health videos available.

All of the kids eat so much better, they are healthier, happier and surprise me more and more everyday. I used to LOVE my full fat latte and never thought I would give it up but I now love a decaf SOY latte and can't even stand the smell of the fatty milk coffees. Our kids eat all the veges we can buy, they try anything, of course we had resistance at the beginning, I remember a big girl crying over the insistance that soya milk be tried on cereal! But they took barely any time to adjust and we are all reaping the benefits.

Sarah