Food & Drink:How To Spot The Signs Of Dairy Intolerance

Step 1: What are the symptoms

Now we’re here at The Old Dairy and you may be asking what possible excuse have we got for filming in a pub? Well the reason is this story is all about dairy, butter, milk and cheese. Three of the most common food stuffs in the UK of course. But new stats revealed that millions of people who suffer from bloating and stomach upsets don’t realize that dairy products could be to blame.

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Step 2: If you have the symptoms:

So what should we do if we suffer from these kinds of symptoms? Well with me is nutritionist, Angela Dowden, Angela what should we do?

If you get symptoms and you are getting them persistently then what you should is keep a food diary. You should do that for a couple of weeks so you write down absolutely everything that you eat. And also some of the symptoms that you might be getting, some of the stomach symptoms that you might be getting. See if there is a link between the two and then that might give you an indication of whether dairy really is a problem for you.

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Step 3: What foods are dairy?

Now with us here we have quite a few dishes. Obviously we’ve got cheese and the butter here, they’re going to cause problems. But is there anything else we should look out for?

Cheese obviously is dairy, but also we might find dairy cropping up in unusual sources. Like the crackers for examples, they could have some dairy in there as well, just used as a processing aid in there. Obviously this butter, which is obviously a dairy product and the soup here often has milk in there to make it creamy. So, yes it does crop up not just in the obvious foods.

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Step 4: Substitutions for dairy:

Now and awful lot of people are going to like butter on their bread, that kind of thing, but if they are intolerant to diary products what kind of thing can they actually do?

Well they need to take advantage of the products out there now, which are increasingly the dairy free products. So I encourage people to go into the supermarkets and find what’s on the shelf. You would need to replace milk, obviously, with some other alternative such as soymilk or rice milk or oat milk. Find one that you like, experiment. Spreads, again, most of them have got dairy in them so look for an alternative, for example a spread called Pure, which is quite good, that you could have. Yes, so its just really finding out what’s out there and finding some alternatives.

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Step 5: Getting information on dairy intolerance:

So where can anyone with symptoms actually get more information?

Go see your GP, explain that you have these problems; they might do some tests to be sure. Also if you connect to the Internet, go on to a website called puredairyfree.co.uk. There is a lot of information on there about dairy intolerance and allergy and also some recipes that you can follow which are dairy free. Angela, thank you very much indeed. So the message is if you are getting any symptoms then take action.