You are right, but that same thing goes for all IF. We can't say that we MUST endlessly avoid things for fear they might possibly hurt us.
Everyone should be able to decide for themselves whether they are up for the risk. And most people are up for the risk for things like peas and green beans, although they have been known to cause gas, and cramps in many IBSers. If you are a D, then you don't even need the IF they contain. Thus they are on the same grounds as dairy -- you don't actually need them (you will do fine without them), but they are nutricious... so a moment when you try them usually comes.
We should not forget that dairy avoidance puts a pretty large strain on budgets, and not everyone can afford to do what I did, that is following EFI to the T and trying all kinds of things (dairy substitutes, butter substitutes, wheat substitutes, organic food, cooking everything from scratch (that's time expenditure), and so on). My food/health bill rose 3-4 times when I started EFI.
It is not a minor issue, that's what I am saying. Avoiding dairy has a price and if done without a reason "just because someone said so", one pays. I don't want to see people suffer and be unable to buy important medicine because they are avoiding dairy and trying to get their protein and whatnot from other sources (not to mention some people are used to having their cereal with milk rather than water, that is preferences). I don't want, and I believe noone wants, to hear stories about someone who would not be bothered by dairy, but avoids it religeously, and because it's so expensive to do so, can't afford to buy their AD medicine, or laxatives or something like that.
In addition, some of these dairy alternatives have gotten pretty bad reviews. Take soy milk for example. All the controvercy about soy, well... who knows if it's healthy? To me it seems like it's not. Why jeopardize your health when you might not need to (why drink soy milk when you might be able to drink milk?)
I am all for guidelines and I believe Heather is right that you should avoid dairy, but I think you should only do that initially. If you KNOW you are lactose intolerant, of course you're not going to try dairy. If, however, you are not, then ONCE you stabilize, try it. That's what I did with corn. I stabilized and tried it. It was terrible. I hardly eat corn now (super small quantities, super well boiled, etc)... if that happens to you with dairy -- at least you know you are not wasting your money on dairy subs. If not, well, you can get back to spending less money on food. And you can stop drinking substances with extremely negative reviews. When I stopped avoiding dairy, my food bill went back to 1.5 times what it was before IBS (still higher, because of the other things I have to avoid). I never drank soy milk (it tastes awful to me) but I tried rice milk and it constipated me even more. No good for an IBS-C...
Just saying. Avoiding dairy has a cost. Educating people so that they can take an informed decision concerning what to do with their diets is what Heather does. I just wish that same principle be applied to all foods indiscriminately (rather than as now -- if it's dairy or MSG or maybe HFCS, don't even mention them)
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