Introduction

Going out to eat with dietary restrictions can be quite difficult and so a listener has asked the question: how to avoid dairy when eating out. This is a big one.

Reasons why people want to avoid dairy when they go out to eat

Some of the reasons why people want to avoid eating dairy when going out is that they are:

Lactose intolerant

Did you know that 68% of the people in the world are lactose intolerant? 

Lactose intolerance isn't life-threatening for many but if they do ingest dairy it can cause acute discomfort. 

So by restaurants not having meals without dairy in them, they're not being at all inclusive. 

It's so important for restaurants to have dairy-free options on the menu. There are many cultures who can't eat dairy, so it could actually be seen as not accepting different cultures into the restaurant.  It is a really good policy that restaurants have dairy free options on a menu.

Another reason is they could be allergic to dairy. 

Dairy is one of the five most common allergies along with 

Eggs

Nuts

Soy 

Gluten

There are a lot of people who are allergic to dairy and they can even have anaphylactic reactions to dairy.

Another reason is that people who want to eat plant-based food manage really well at home, but when they go out to eat, they find that there are very limited options on the menu. 

They really struggle and then they eat dairy and feel bad afterwards. Their conscience gets the better of them, which can affect their mental well-being and set them back from adding more plant-based food to their diet.

Another reason is that many people have heard that dairy is unhealthy and want to lower their cholesterol. They don't want to jeopardise that while eating out. They've done really well at home with not having dairy, but they go out to eat and compromise that because there's nothing on the menu.

Some dairy foods contain saturated fat. Dairy is a saturated fat that can raise LDL cholesterol, which increases the risk of heart disease, as you're probably aware. 

Recent studies have shown that eating small amounts of fermented dairy like cheese and yogurt may not contribute to raising LDL cholesterol. Not that I'm saying to go and eat cheese and yogurt but that is the truth, that they don't raise LDL cholesterol as much as butter. 

Butter definitely raises LDL cholesterol and chefs often use copious amounts to make food taste good. Therefore, it can be very difficult to avoid butter when eating out at restaurants.

Of course, there are people like me. I'm vegan, and I want to ensure that no meal contains dairy. I also want to be included when I go out to eat, so I try to go to vegan restaurants. 

However, if that's not possible, I want to be able to go out and eat out, especially when I'm away. I need to know that what I eat will be vegan and dairy-free. 

Even though that is a lifestyle choice now that I am vegan, you may have heard my first podcast, where I actually felt quite nauseous after eating dairy, especially cream. 

Maybe I do have some level of intolerance there, but now that I haven't had dairy for 10 years, well, actually, last year I was served something that I was told was vegan, and instantly I could taste that there was butter in it. They did take it away and replace it. Often, if people who have been vegan for a long time accidentally eat dairy, they will get sick. 

Tips on avoiding dairy when eating out 

Go to a vegan café or restaurant

1. Choose vegan restaurants and cafes because you know that there'll be no cross-contamination and everything that is served will be dairy-free. To find vegan restaurants, you can check out the Happy Cow app, or you can do a Google search. I often check the local Facebook groups for that area if I'm going to a new area. Often, in their informational guides, they will have a list of restaurants and cafes you can eat in. If not, I just put in a happy post saying, "Hi, I'm coming to your town. Can you please point me in the direction of good vegan restaurants?"

Choose a café or restaurant

2. If the restaurants aren't vegan, you can choose cafes and restaurants that do have a vegan menu. Plenty of cafes now have a vegan menu. Then you can choose anything off the vegan menu. You're going to be guaranteed that it's dairy-free. 

Ring ahead

3. Ring ahead and ask if anything on the menu can be made vegan or dairy-free, do not leave it to chance. A good example of that is that Mak and I went in November to celebrate my birthday. Yay, I love celebrating my birthday! We went to the Emporium in Brisbane. It's a beautiful, swanky hotel, and it's like a yearly holiday at the moment. We went for three nights and they had a new restaurant, Ferma. It's an Italian restaurant. I wrote to them and they said yes, we can definitely make things vegan. The restaurant contacted me directly. 

When we got there, they didn't have a written vegan menu, but they definitely had choices for us. We ended up booking and going there the second night as well, and they offered us different options the next night too.  It's really good to ring ahead because then they're super aware of your needs, and if they're a good restaurant, they'll accommodate that.

When you go to food courts, look for falafel and Asian food

4. If you are somewhere like I was, in Sydney with a girlfriend in December and we were going out to eat. We didn't want to go to a restaurant but there was a food court there. Food courts are quite easy for me to eat at if there's a falafel place. It's very easy to watch what they're putting in your falafel or onto your falafel bowl because you don't have to have the bread if you're gluten intolerant.

 Ensure they're not using the same tongs they use for the cheese so there's no cross-contamination. That is a good option. In places like food courts, Asian food is really good because it rarely has any dairy. Japanese sushi rolls are pretty good because if you go to the vegan options they don't bother putting mayonnaise in, so there's no chance of dairy. Although mayonnaise is made with eggs, I don't know what I thought about that. I was just trying to think of the one thing in Japanese food that might have dairy. You can do pretty well if you're out at a food court.

Double and triple check

5. If you're caught out and you haven't rung ahead, then when asking the lovely wait person, double and triple check that they can make your order without dairy. 

Take your first-aid seed kit with you

6. If a restaurant can’t accommodate you, order a salad and a side of chips. You're not going to get your protein there, but this is a really good tip: always make sure whenever you go out, wherever you go out to eat, you have your first aid seed kit with you. So you have your kit full of seeds and nuts, especially pepitas and pistachios because they are complete proteins and other nuts and seeds that you like. You can even toast the pepitas, the sunflower seeds and sesame seeds and have that in some sort of container so that you can pop that on your salad and chips to help you have a bit more protein, to give you energy throughout the afternoon, especially if you're going to eat lunch out.

For more information on complete protein, sign up for the complete protein chart .

Thank you, beautiful listener, for asking that question. If you have questions you would like me to speak to, please send them to me because I will answer them. 

Recipe 

It's recipe time! Woohoo! 

So, cashew cream. Cashew cream is delicious. 

Often people ask me if there are a lot of calories and fat in cashew cream.

Cashews may have a few extra calories and a bit more fat than other nuts but they have way less than dairy cream. 

They also have a whole lot of nutritional benefits too, which I will talk about in a future podcast. 

1 cup cashews (soaked overnight and put in the fridge)

1 - 2  tbsp lemon juice  or apple cider vinegar for savoury cashew cream 

1 to 2 tbsp light agave for sweet cashew cream or 6 dates or maple syrup

¼ to ⅓  cup water

1. Rinse the cashews from the soaking water.

2. Add them to the blender with your choice of lemon juice (for savoury cream)  or sweetener (for sweet cream) and then add the water and blend until completely smooth.  If it isn’t going smooth, add more water, 1 tbsp at a time.

Fun Cooking Tip (FCT)

When soaking cashews or any other nuts, grains, beans and legumes and the weather is hot outside, store them in your fridge. This will stop grains from fermenting and cashews from going gloopy. 

If the cashews do go gloopy and they have been stored in the fridge then just wash the gloop off.

Only leave cashews soaking for 24 hours in the fridge.

That's it for this week. 

And I just wanted share with you all that I have a vegan foundation cooking course, which is now a live.

3 x 3 hours of tuition, just you and me this year, so it's pretty luxurious.

Or for half the price, you can join the group vegan foundation cooking course   starting in May this year.

In this course you will learn lots of dairy alternatives.

Until next week, I hope you have the most sensationally delicious week. Thanks for listening. 

Bye xxx