Eating out

I’m that person now. The “difficult one”… The one that asks if there’s any dairy in the meals. Repeating sometimes: “Are you sure this was not cooked in butter?” or “Just want to confirm that there’s no milk in that omelette is there?”

The last time I went out for dinner with a group, the menu was quite extensive, offering a lot of different options. More than your usual restaurant. Meals were well described but all included cheese… I told our waiter about my intolerance and then he looked at me and said: “Well, you really only have one option then and it’s the Salmon plate”. So I asked him: “Can’t you just not put cheese if I order that has some?”. Turns out the patties we pre-made, with cheese. And the pulled pork sauce had butter, and so did the sloppy joe’s or it was in the salad dressing. Everything had some dairy product that could not be removed. They couldn’t even serve me the rice that came with the salmon because it was cooked with butter… Who puts butter in rice btw? That experience was simply devastating. Coming to the realization that you’re now extremely limited with what you can now eat is the worst for a foodie like me.

It’s one thing being the “difficult” one with strangers serving you at the restaurant, but a whole other  when you’re being that difficult person with your family and friends. Arriving at a dinner and having to question the ingredients, just to be sure, or having them bend over backwards to make a lactose-free dessert is just awful. It sort of makes you want to just cook yourself and eat at home. I guess that means I’ll have to start hosting a lot more! Luckily it’s Fall now and the slow cooker’s out.

What Are Dairy Products?

As I’ve stated before, lactose can be found in milk. A milk product, or dairy product, is food produced from the milk of a mammal. Here’s a short list of the main dairy products we consume:

• Milk
• Yogurt
• Cream
• Cheese (hard and soft!)
• Butter
• Ice Cream
• Kafir
• Buttermilk
• Cream cheese (which, you will know, is NOT considered to be cheese!)

There’s a false idea in certain people who think eggs are dairy products. They are not, cause you know, they don’t come from the milk of mammals, right? It appears to be a common misconception as eggs are an animal product which can be confused with dairy product. But I assure you that eggs come from chicken, which are, a completely different type of animal called birds!

What about MAYONNAISE? Often when I ask if a meal  or food contain dairy, the response is: “Yes, it has mayonnaise in it.”

Well, mayonnaise is made out of eggs, oil, vinegar and lemon juice. No milk here, no dairy in it then! Whoop di doo cause I love me some mayo!

 

 

Veganism Yay Or Nay?

I recently travelled to Ogunquit, Maine, and did a mandatory pit stop at the infamous candy shop.  It’s a must when visiting my favorite little town on the East Coast. I was excited as usual walking in, although I quickly realized that I probably wouldn’t be able to buy anything given my recent diagnosis. It’s so recent that I still forget all the things that I can’t eat, or that there’s dairy everywhere… But I thought I’d give it a try and  I asked for assistance finding some dairy-free candy. The clerk looked at me puzzled and asked:

– Sugar free?
– No.
– Gluten free?
– Nope.
– Oh, you mean like vegan?
– Hmmm, not really… but that’ll do!

That’s when I realized that I had a whole new type of food that I would be able to dip into, that would be able to serve as substitute for all of the good stuff that I no longer eat and that I dearly missed. So I bought 3 snowballs: coconut cover in dark chocolate. And it was DELICIOUS! OMG I had missed chocolate so much. It was unbelievable, I should have bought a full box of it! It felt so good to be able to be able to eat some chocolate at last.

I never had much respect for vegans or vegetarians, for that matter. I’m  a carnivore and don’t really adhere to people not consuming meat out of principle. I mean, humans have always been carnivores after all and meat is just delicious! But I’ve a new-found respect for vegans and how they manage to recreate any food, dairy-free. It’ll never taste the same, but at least it’s close enough and better than simply eliminating most of the food that I regularly would consume, so I’ll take it!

I’m now on a search for finding the best vegan products as substitutes to all of the lovely things that I had to say no to. I’ll be sure to inform you and post all of my findings! Share yours too!

Travelling With An Intolerance

I travelled for the first time since my diagnosis. I was a little apprehensive to be honest. I was going to Maine and would eat a mix of home cooked meals and restaurant meals. I planned some of the food ahead of time, bringing some lactose-free milk and cheese for sandwiches, since I had no idea what I would be able to find there. I did a quick peak at the Hannaford grocery and could not locate lactose-free dairy products, so lucky that I had brought some. Also lucky that we were driving!

Whenever I go to the restaurant, even here, I try to either not pick something with dairy or take some lactase with my meal. Even if they say there is no dairy, it’s always risky if they cook food in butter for example and the staff isn’t always aware of this, or even what dairy products includes (!!!)

Since I was in Maine, I had to eat some lobster and what best with that is clam chowder! Obviously, there’s heavy cream involved so I took some lactase with my meal (2 extra strong). Then I took some more before eating the lobster roll. I was already feeling terribly full (bloated is the appropriate terms, but there’s a sense of fullness and that you’re going to explode that joins it) after the clam chowder. Given that the roll was $18 USD I was going to eat it. Boy did I feel bad afterwards. The benefits of eating such delicious food was completely counterbalanced by the terrible side effects. In the end, it was not worth it.

I even showed my belly to my friend afterwards and she was shocked, it looked like I was 5 months pregnant. Oh the pain… and the gas.

This is a mourning that I’m living at the moment. I’m still not over it. I will take a while to be over it… Chocolate. Tears!

Not The Only One Tho

Apparently 7 million Canadians suffer from lactose intolerance. That stat is hard to verify because people are not all medically diagnosed or don’t know that their condition is related to lactose intolerance, which would mean that there could most likely be many more people affected. We’re talking about 20% of Canadians here! That’s significant.

If I was a dairy producers, knowing that there’s potentially 1/5 of my target that can’t consume regular dairy, it would be incentive enough to developing more lactose free products. Grant you, it’s more costly, but you can reach a much broader audience. Seems like a no-brainer. Let’s put more pressure on dairy producers to produce more lactose free dairy products!

 

Dairy Products Are EVERYWHERE

What I realized is that dairy products are everywhere, under a whole whack of different forms. They are in granola bars, cookies, soups, tomato sauce for ready-made for pasta, bread and worst of them all CHOCOLATE!

At first, I wasn’t looking at all of the ingredients in great detail. But now that humus made me so sick, I’m more and more careful about what I buy. Reading through a list of ingredients when you grocery shop can be long and tedious. Most manufacturers will display in bold at the very end “contain” or “may contain”. I would not buy something that “contains” but “may contain” I would because all it means is that they don’t take the precaution to use facilities where there would be a separated chain of production that hasn’t touched dairy, but I can’t imagine that this would really have a big impact. Please… say… it’s… OK! I mean an intolerance is not like an allergy. Like nuts is dangerous for some people when they are in contact, but dairy?

My colleague is Jewish and keeps kosher. Part of observing kosher is not consuming dairy at the same time as meat. When products are made kosher, they display a kosher symbol, then if the product contains other ingredients that you should be aware of, like dairy! You can see at a glance by just looking at the symbol D for dairy. Not all products are kosher but this has been proven to be very useful when shopping to quickly look for the kosher symbol, then know right away if it also has dairy. Thanks Sara for a very useful trick!

Here’s how you do it: first you have to look for the kosher symbol:

 

 

Then you look for the D next to it, meaning Dairy

 or sometimes this one

Then you’ll know if you’re gtg!

Does Lactase Help?

I asked my gastroenterologist to prescribe lactase, which is the enzyme that digests lactose. Being lactose intolerant means that my body doesn’t produce enough of the lactase enzyme responsible for catalyzing lactose into glucose and galactose. Supplements can help, but not in all cases. He mostly told me it didn’t work but to try it and see.

The most known brand is Lactaid, but I tried the name brand. It is sold off the shelf, but having a prescription helps cover a large part of the costs. I mean it is not cheap, about $18+tx/80 extra strong pills. You have to take 3 per meal, so you do the math. Doesn’t last very long…

I’m still trying it out. So far, it looks like it makes it better, but not as if I had not consumed any dairy, unfortunately.  I’m not sure how I feel about it yet. It makes me very thirsty and leaves a chalky taste in my mouth at the end of the day.

I’ll publish some updates as I keep trying it out. The trick is to do A/B testing. So if I stumble across food that makes me very hill, then I’ll try eating it with the lactase.  For example, humus made me very sick recently. It contained Romano cheese. Tried it a couple of days later (had to get over how much bloating and pain it caused) with the lactase and it was much more tolerable. Who would have thought humus contained dairy!

Discovering Lactose-Free Dairy Products

There are lactose-free dairy products now. Milk, cheese, yogurt and cooking butter is what I’ve tried so far. Rumor has it there are more options, but I’m still in discovery mode.

The first lactose-free milk I tried was Lactantia‘s and I hated it. It tasted all sweet and chalky… Then I tried Natrel‘s and it tastes delicious. They are true to their advertising statement claiming that we can’t tell the difference between regular milk and lactose-free milk. Lactantia should work on their product! Mind you this is filtered milk that we’re talking about so it is more expensive than the regular type of milk, but I can live with that. Oh and it froths REALLY WELL! ❤

Cheese is different… You can only find hard cheeses that are lactose-free. Soft cheese is younger so it has the most lactose. The older the cheese the less lactose it contains. Technically older cheese don’t have to be lactose-free to be consumed as their lactose level is so low. But they also make lactose-free cheese. They taste similar but there aren’t that many options at my local grocery…. This wicked website has been helpful at identifying what I can buy, as sometimes it’s not obvious on the packages. These cheese are sold with the fine cheeses, not in the regular cheese bars.

I’ve tried 2 brands of lactose-free yogurt so far. Yoptimal which is not my favorite just in general. I had tried it before and I’m not crazy about the available flavours, but it’s ok I guess. Iogo was already a brand that I loved, so I’m glad I can keep eating it. Comes with probiotics too, bonus!

Surprisingly I also found some cooking butter! I’m pretty happy about this because I love cooking with butter, just tastes better and I’m against margarine even though I was raised on it.

So Now What?

The gastroenterologist told me that I was lucky, that being diagnosed with gluten intolerance is much worst because gluten is everywhere. Little does he know so is dairy, man!

I love milk products. Anything dairy I just love it. I live and breathe dairy! I was raised drinking milk and loving my daily dose. I’m a cheese fiend, I can’t live without it. It’s the highlight of all of my salads. I have a yogurt every day for lunch… I mean I worked on the Dairy Farmers of Canada account for 4.5 years at our agency… So I’m not just saying this because they were my clients. I’m saying this because I truly believe in the importance of consuming dairy. 2-3 portions a day as your daily intake to be precise!

Milk products are an essential part of a healthy diet. They offer various nutrients that help reduce the risks of developing certain diseases such as osteoporosis, colorectal cancer, diabetes and high blood pressure. So when my doctor suggested switching all my dairy products to their lactose-free version, I was relieved because he didn’t suggest cutting them, which would have been a poor recommendation. He did specify not to switch my milk to soy milk as this sh!t is extremely processed and people also have a hard time digesting it. Plus, it’s full of an oestrogen-like protein so you have to be careful how much you consume of it.

Consuming dairy is supporting an important industry and amazingly hard-working farmers, that love their animals and take care of them. They contribute to making a nation of Canadians healthy so having your daily dose of dairy is really important for all of the reasons listed above. Yes I am pro dairy and proud to be, but now I would have to learn how to live without it? No way, not fair!

Getting Diagnosed

So in the Fall when I saw my Family Doctor, I discussed my condition and she really didn’t make a fuss about it. It wasn’t the first time that I had brought this up in the recent years but she still told me not to worry, some people just get more gas. Ok.

Comes Spring, I’m overly concerned because with gas comes bloating and with bloating comes discomfort. Some days after eating a small salad, I would get so bloated that I’d look like I was 3 months pregnant. I might have gained a couple of pounds at the time but I mean come on! I’ve been eating salads every day for lunch for like 7 years and know that a simple salad doesn’t make you feel completely full like you’re about to explode! Something’s had to be wrong…

So I went back to see her and she gave me a recommendation to see a Gastroenterologist. When I met with him, he told me that gas, bloating and discomfort can be caused by food intolerance so he recommends taking 2 tests: lactose intolerance and gluten intolerance.

I went to the hospital and sat through a 2 hrs lactose intolerance test: drinking a tall glass of lactose and drawing blood every 30 minutes. The gluten test is a basic blood test. No biggie…

A couple of weeks later, the diagnosis came in: I had a severe lactose intolerant. Well it’s better than a gluten intolerance, he said. Ya think?! Now what?