Some members of my family are dairy intolerant. This is usually fine when cooking at home (there are plenty of substitutes for milk products), but very difficult when going out. During the Summer, I take my kids out on day trips around England and it is not always possible to prepare food in advance. And, I love the junk food. So, we’ll go to a fast food place.
The problem with dairy intolerance is that so many foods have milk (lactose, whey, or just “milk proteins”) in their ingredients. Common sense doesn’t work when trying identify what has milk in it. Most types of hot dogs, for example, include milk protein (but not all of them). The tomato sauce on Pizza Hut pizzas include milk. The BBQ ribs at TGI Fridays contain milk. It has taken me a while to learn what to look out for.
If you have children that have (or you yourself has) an intolerance or allergy, you know how difficult this can be. Last week, for instance, I stopped into a Subway and asked the store manager if their rib sandwich contained any dairy products. He looked annoyed and told me that he had to read the ingredients on the box back in the freezer. I asked him if he could do that. He disappeared for a minute and returned with a giant white box which he read the side of. “No, no milk,” he said. But I couldn’t be sure if he was looking for the term “lactose” or “whey” or anything else which might include it.
Most fast-food chains make nutritional literature available online (although never usually available in the store). I’ve printed out the documents for all the major chains which exists in the UK and pasted them all together.  I’ve found that printing all of the documents out (two pages to a sheet–double sided) and highlighting all the milk products makes going out for fast food a bit easier. It’s easy to keep this print-out in the car so we have it if we need it.
Here is a set of links of the big chains ingredient documents. These are all American chains, but the links are to the UK sites (not sure if they vary in the UK). If you have children with food intolerance, I hope you find this useful.
McDonalds
http://www.mcdonalds.co.uk/static/pdf/food/OurFood-Booklet.pdf (pages 8-27 have ingredients listed)
Burger King
http://www.burgerking.co.uk/files/documents/ingredients.pdf
KFC
http://www.kfc.com/nutrition/pdf/kfc_allergens_april09.pdf
Pizza Hut
http://www.pizzahut.co.uk/media/77466/ingredients_list_starters_&_sides-0609.pdf
Dominos
http://www.takeafreshlook.co.uk/downloads/PizzaBasesToppingsIngredients.pdf
