So, remember how our family was going to cut out dairy as a little well-living experiment? Well, my husband gave up the first weekend, and refused to buy a dairy-free cookbook for me, and I seemed to be the only one who cared. (And by refused, I mean he kept procrastinating and telling me he was going to but never did.) But I persisted. I moved off of soy milk and on to rice because my stomach was constantly making weird noises after ingesting soy, which concerned me. I did continue eating soy yogurt, which didn’t have any weird effects on me, but it does taste a little funny. It’s somehow thicker than dairy yogurt, and maybe creamier.
I just stopped eating cheese, and used the rice milk in any recipe that called for milk, and really didn’t feel that encumbered by the change in milks. Really the lack of cheese is what did me in. I think Lloyd gave up when he realized going dairy-free meant no more pizza. And I should also mention that the price of dairy alternatives did not help the cause. I’m cheap, and spending twice as much money for half the amount of milk was not encouraging.
I was really trying to cut out anything that was remotely dairy-related; this meant not ingesting anything with whey or casein, which are basically milk proteins, and most people who avoid dairy due to allergies are not affected by them. Going this hard-core was really difficult. I have gained a whole new understanding for what it’s like to go grocery shopping with food allergies. It sucks. Not only are things more expensive, but I spent half my grocery trips reading labels, only to discover that most everything I picked up contained milk products. It was nice that most products list in bold if there is milk present, but really discouraging to discover all the things that do!
Unfortunately, the milk proteins are not counted as allergens, which upset me the most. I will explain why: I went shopping about 2 weeks in, determined to find a cheese-substitute. I had seen an advertisement for a veggie Parmesan cheese, and I was really craving some for spaghetti. So I picked up a container of it, only to read in the ingredients that it was made with casein, as was pretty much every other cheese substitute! Is it really fair to say something is not cheese when the main ingredient is from milk and cheese?! I believe that was the day my resolve started to waiver.
A week later, as we were eating yet another bowl of soup (remember how everyone was sick?), I randomly decided to look at the ingredients of the crackers I had been crumbling into my broth daily. Guess what? They’re made with milk. Now maybe you already knew that, but I guess I don’t really think about all the things milk is present in. It is a lot. (Oh, and earlier that day I was accepting Goldfish crackers from Emma as she shoved them in my mouth, and was thinking how divine they tasted . . . then I realized it was because they were made with cheddar cheese. Duh!)
Soup just isn’t as good without crackers. And I was stressed. I felt like I couldn’t eat anything. The only good thing was the tofutti ice cream bars, which I may just get again because I really did like them. Eating and cooking was a worse chore than ever before. So I decided to end it. All the little articles I was reading said that you should go at least 7 days dairy-free and then binge as you normally would to feel the difference. Everyone said you would feel just awful. Well, I didn’t technically go 7 days because of the crackers, but I also don’t know that the amount of milk in 5 crackers can possibly be that overpowering.
Saturday night. A nice pepperoni pizza. A Dairy Queen pumpkin pie blizzard. Bliss. No heartburn. No cramps. No lack of sleep. Nothin’.
I was a little disappointed. All that effort and it didn’t make me feel any different. I did lose about 5 pounds, but I’m not sure if that was because I cut out dairy, or because I barely ate since I couldn’t find anything to eat.
That’s it. The end of the dairy-free challenge. I am so sorry for those of you out there with diet restrictions. I understand now. (Well, not how eating foods makes you feel bad, but how hard it is to find things to eat anyway.) I still want to do more research on milk, and I still don’t believe it’s amazingly good for you, but I have no problem with it for the time being. And I do love pizza.
The Daring Kitchen
