Inside Health

Rashes, a runny nose and weird poos are all common in babies. Parents are sometimes told these symptoms mean their baby is allergic to cows milk and are prescribed low allergy formula or advised to avoid dairy if they are breastfeeding. Marijke Peters cut dairy out of her diet to try and help the gut problems her new baby Eva was having - but it made no difference and she's still trying to find out why she has blood in her poo. Dr Robert Boyle sees babies with allergies in his clinic at St Mary's hospital in London. Those with a cows' milk protein allergy can safely drink low-allergy formula milk - but Dr Boyle thinks that more than the expected 1% of babies are being diagnosed with the allergy. So he looked at the number of prescriptions for these specialised formula milks dispensed in the UK, Norway and Australia. In the UK he says that ten times the number you'd expect to see are prescribed. Professor Paula Moynihan who's Director of Food and Health at the University of Adelaide says these formula mi