title: The performance of parents of children receiving cow's milk free diets at identification of commercial food products with and without cow's milk.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Programa de Pós-graduação, Nutrição, Universidade Federal de São Paulo - Escola Paulista de Medicina (UNIFESP-EPM), São Paulo, SP, Brazil.
authors.forename: Thabata Koester
authors.initials: TK
authors.lastname: Weber
authors.forename: Patrícia da Graça Leite
authors.initials: Pda G
authors.lastname: Speridião
authors.forename: Vera Lucia
authors.initials: VL
authors.lastname: Sdepanian
authors.forename: Ulysses Fagundes
authors.initials: UF
authors.lastname: Neto
authors.forename: Mauro Batista
authors.initials: MB
authors.lastname: de Morais
mesh_terms: 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