Jess, our youngest, has always had allergy issues. When Jess was younger Jo needed to eliminate all dairy from her diet and have lactose free milk. The lactose would come through the breastmilk you see, and give Jess what we aptly-named, 'blow outs'. Not a pretty sight, or a pleasant one, especially when all the research said that breastfed babies usually had sweeter than usual poops. Not this kid! So we did our homework and eliminated what we thought was the culprit and life carried on as usual.
This past Easter, you may remember me posting about Jess's reaction to chocolate. She had what we thought was a stomach bug for weeks until we figured out it was the little bits of chocolate she was eating every day. (And I do mean little - each piece was probably the size of half a cadbury chocolate square!) For weeks poor Jess had blowouts. By this time we didn't call them blowouts anymore. They were dubbed *toxic waste*. They were eye-watering, gas mask worthy, gag-inducing poops. And explosive - did I mention that?
So, we eliminated the chocolate and Jess's system calmed down. Good news, right? Well it would have if the toxic waste poops went away completely. They didn't. We thought it was the chocolate, but that didn't explain why white chocolate caused toxic waste too.
We started trying to figure out what was in the foods that seemed to cause it, and what was different about them to the foods Jess could eat that didn't. We think we've found it. Soy Lecithin.
Let me tell you, it's in a LOT of food! It's in most chocolate (milk, dark and white chocolate), most margarines, many yoghurts, vegetable oils, chocolate spreads, many snackfoods. The list goes on. What's interesting is that Jess has been avoiding some things that cause her stomach upsets. The only brand and flavour of potato chips that she will eat are the ONLY ONES that don't have it!
So, these are OUT:
And these are IN:
We don't know at this stage whether we'll need to cut out soy as well as soy lecithin. Here's hoping we have some solid answers at the allergy specialist next month.
I'm looking forward to a little less toxic waste at our house. :-D
