As some of you may know I have a dd who suffers from severe eczema and asthma.

The problem has reached the point where I have been advised to remove wheat and dairy from her diet to see if this may be causing or at least making the problem worse.

The problem is that she loves bread and cheese and I often bake so she would be missing out on treats like shortbread and the odd jam sponge.

Has anyone got any experience of removing these items from their children's diet?? I am hoping that if it does have a positive affect that she may be able to have the odd treat once her skin is under control.

I can't tell you how horrible I am feeling about her condition. She is the only one in our family to suffer like this and now I am making her feel the odd one out again by giving her a different diet. I have tried to say that she will have her own 'special' food but she is 9 now and it just isn't cutting it. As far as possible we will all follow her diet but then I feel guilty about my other children as I will be enforcing an unnecessary change to the way they eat also.

guilt, guilt, guilt!!! :(

Oh no, just thought she loves pasta too - rubbish!!!

Just quickly, we have wheat about once a week here, so yes, you can bring up a child with no (which i did for 4 years) to limited wheat intake.

For bread you can try rye bread (it's a marmite thing; you love it or loathe it) or spelt bread. For cheese, I give my daughter goats cheese and she tolerates that fine. So bread and cheese is back on the menu

At other times, offer ryvita, oatcakes, rice cakes, even ryvita now make a corn crispbread, so just experiment to see if there is one she likes.

For shortbread, spelt flour works beautifully, for cakes I use a mix of rice flour and ground almonds - dh PREFERS it as it has a better taste and texture, so that's worth expermenting with. Doves farm also do a gluten free mix for bread making, so have a go with that too.

Let the guilt go, hon. Why do you feel guilty? You are addressing the issue and empowering her to treat herself naturally in the future rather than resort to harsh drugs which could screw her up for life.
Just offer the alternatives with love and don't get drawn into a long battle of the guilt with her.

I don't feel guilty about my daughter because I know I am doing the best for her. What's great about offering her the food she loves and then having her wheezing and scratching?  I tell her as much and I tell her it is BECAUSE I love her that I don't feed her all the crap that her friends eat.

:-*

Starchild x

corn pasta (health food shop and some supermarkets) or rice noodles for the pasta thing

Hi Cococ nut
can I be so nosiey to ask have they given her a blood test to find out what she's allergic to?  My ds had one last year and it realy helped to pin point his allergys and it  ment that he didn't need any dietry change.

For milk use oat or soya, Yo do nice banana, chocolate and strawberry  mik shakes and my two like vinilla soya on corn flakes,
pure dairy free spread ( no nasty fats)
rice cakes and rivita instead of bread
Scheese non dairy vegan cheese http://www.buteisland.com/index.htm
They do every thing from chedder to blue style
you can use banana or silken tofu in some recipes in stead of egg
there's some realy good non wheat flour out there, goodness direct do some
and there also lots of yummy vegan chocolate 

We use these web sights a lot for dairy free cakes/bakes ect and you could substute wheat flour for non wheat.
http://www.theppk.com/veganbaking.html
http://www.parsleysoup.co.uk/ Wait till she see's the dairy free hedgehog cake 

Hope this helps

Lorna xx

we have just done a 2 month trial with no milk or egg for Emily (3 1/2), can't help at all with the wheat thing but we used the egg substitute stuff (from Holland and Barrett) in baking and I was really impressed- some of the cakes even tasted better than with normal egg! For us, the results of the 2 months were inconclusive so we are having 2 months eating everything and we'll then make a decision on what to do.
Would it be possible to cut out wheat for a while and then cut out the dairy/ egg and see what happens instead of all at once- it may be a bit easier for all of you to adjust than changing your whole diet overnight.
Good luck
Gill

Thanks all, you're all so kind!

I am thinking that we might just do wheat to begin with if there is no improvement then do dairy.

I've got the corn pasta and gluten free flour from our little organic shop in the town so we'll attempt some baking over the weekend and let you know how we get on.

Thanks again, Amanda. X

Hi Amanda

I've come in a bit late on this one…

I've suffered with coeliac disease since I was about 12 months old.  First I just wanted to say don't feel guilty - how can you possibly be responsible?  Who knows why some of us are allergic to some things and some people aren't ... it certainly isn't something you could have caused.

I've had to cut out anything containing wheat (plus barley, rye, oats and bran) since I was weaned. It was really hard for my mum, she was constanly worried that I would eat something I shouldn't and be violently ill.  She did a really job baking me special gluten free spnges and buns etc and I loved helping her to do this.  I think if it wasn't for my allergies she wouldn't have done much baking so I loot at this as a positive thing.

Supermarkets have a really good selection of free from foods now so there's no reason she should miss out.  This evening I had a gluten free naan bread and a gluten free lager with my curry (all from sainsburys).  Not that she should be participating in this just yet!

I always find it is best to use a specific recipe designed for gluten/wheat free flours.  If you try to use a normal recipe with the special flour it is usually a flop because of course you don't have the 'glutinous' factor in it.  I would recommend the corn and vegetable pasta that you can buy in supermarkets.  

Hope this helps

Tracy