The performance of parents of children receiving cow's milk free diets at identification of commercial food products with and without cow's milk.
OBJECTIVE
To investigate how well the parents of children on cow's milk free diets perform at recognizing whether or not expressions describe and foods contain cow's milk proteins.


METHODS
Interviews were conducted with 24 parents of children on cow's milk and by-products exclusion diets and 23 parents of children with no need for any type of exclusion diet. They were asked if they recognized 12 expressions relating to cow's milk. They were then asked to classify 10 commercial food products in terms of whether or not they contained cow's milk proteins.


RESULTS
Terms that included the word milk were more often recognized by both groups of parents. The parents of children on exclusion diets recognized the terms cow's milk protein, traces of milk and milk formulation or preparation most frequently (p < 0.05). Less than 25.0% of those interviewed recognized casein, caseinate, lactalbumin and lactoglobulin. Both groups correctly identified more of the commercial products containing cow's milk than those free from milk. The median number of products containing cow's milk (total = 5) correctly identified by the parents of children on exclusion diets (4.0) was greater than for the control group (3.0; p = 0.005). Reading at least one label was associated with a greater chance of correctly identifying more than five of the 10 products (odds ratio = 8.0).


CONCLUSIONS
Despite having received guidance, the parents of children on exclusion diets were not fully prepared to manage these diets, indicating a need for improvements to the instruction provided when indicating exclusion diets.
Weber
Thabata Koester
TK
Programa de Pós-graduação, Nutrição, Universidade Federal de São Paulo - Escola Paulista de Medicina (UNIFESP-EPM), São Paulo, SP, Brazil.
Speridião
Patrícia da Graça Leite
Pda G
Sdepanian
Vera Lucia
VL
Neto
Ulysses Fagundes
UF
de Morais
Mauro Batista
MB
D000328:Adult; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D005260:Female; D005515:Food Labeling; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D008297:Male; D016269:Milk Hypersensitivity / Q000178:diet therapy / Q000517:prevention & control*; D010290:Parents; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors