Life with a food allergy

Tate has a dairy allergy. While most people assume he is lactose intolerant, there is a difference between the two. I was trying to explain it the other day, but couldn't find the right way to describe it. The kinesiologist told us to avoid all food with milk products in them and of course, I couldn't remember why. So like a good little historian, I decided it was time to do some research to refresh my memory.
Basically they are similar and both cause the body to have some sort of allergic reaction to ingredients. A lactose intolerance is the body's inability to process the milk's sugar or lactose. Although lactose may be a contributing factor, generally the two proteins in cow's milk, casein and whey, are attributed to causing a dairy allergy.
When Tate has something with cow's milk in it, we are fairly lucky and most of the time, you can only tell by his diapers. I try to be very careful, especially when we aren't eating at home. We don't eat out much, but if I know we are going to, I research restaurant menus ahead of time. I also ask the hostess or waitress if they have allergy menus available. I hate it when restaurants are not cooperative or provide dietary information on-line. This is the information age, what are they hiding? Probably more than I want to know.
Once you start reading labels, you would be surprised how many products actually have dairy hidden in them. Of course there are the obvious products like milk, cheese, butter, yogurt and ice cream. But did you know that there is dairy in some brands of chicken broth, hot dogs, potato chips and spaghetti sauce has dairy in it? Even most of the "dairy-free" cheese has casein in it.
As a milk substitute, he drinks rice, almond or coconut milk. He has a mild soy intolerance too, so we try to steer clear of products with soy as the main ingredient. I prefer the almond or coconut, but we can't get the coconut in town and the store isn't really good about stocking up on the almond. It always has a good supply of vanilla flavored rice milk, but it's a little tough to make things like mashed potatoes with it.
He has cheese substitutes that look nasty! We have found 1 vegan brand that doesn't have casein in it, but we can only get it at the health food stores in Wichita. He seems to like it. I even made him some macaroni and cheese with the "cheddar." It tasted bland to me, but he gobbled it up!
When he was younger, Tate did not like to eat anything too cold. He has recently discovered that he has been missing out! He thinks ice cream tastes pretty good. I tried some of the rice ice cream when I worked at a health food store in college. I thought it was nasty! Since the soy is out, I went with the coconut. It is so good! This will come in really handy at all the birthday parties with ice cream.
The biggest adjustment has been reading labels and researching. It is also tough that we can only get some of his food out of town. Sometimes I make 2 different variations of a meal for dinner. Example: meatballs- I use bread crumbs in ours and crackers in Tate's. We have found one box cake mix that doesn't have milk in it, Duncan Hines Classic Yellow and we can make chocolate frosting using cocoa, powdered sugar and his milk substitute. Poor Michael doesn't get his white bread any more; we eat Nature's Choice bread. We have adjusted, but are still hopeful, as he gets older, he will grow out of it.