Potato starch?

[kate]

I haven't posted on here for a long time. I frequent the FM proboard as my daughter has not been diagnosed as being HFI although she continues to be very sensitive to fructose. We are working closely with a dietician now to work out her tolerance levels.

My question is this....does potato starch contain Fructose? My daughter is reacting having eaten McCains Hash Browns and Hulahoops (UK products) and they both have potato starch in them. Is this the culprit? Or is it just a coincidence and I'm over-analysing?

Also, she seems to be not great after eating sausages, even if I buy ones with no onion powder etc. These ones for example: British Pork, water, rusk, white bread, salt, egg, egg white, dried herbs, white pepper, preservative (sodium metabisulphite), nutmeg. Any culprits in there?

It would be so nice to reach a safe baseline diet and as she's only 2 I find it hard to not jump to conclusions or to tell her off for bad behaviour and then realize later that she's been having a reaction.

Thanks for your help

[colormist]

Hi Kate,
I'm going to do my best to help! Some people have reported sensitivity to potatoes and/or eggs. There might also be a problem with how the pork is prepared or the ingredients in the bread. Lastly, there have been reports that some french fries as dusted in sugar to help preserve their crispiness when being frozen. These are all the things I know that might be suspect.

I'm from the US, so I tend to shy away from flavored meats as they almost always have an unsafe sugar in them. As such, I tend to avoid sausages. I have tried a turkey sausage. I'm not sure what my result was, but I haven't had the notion to try them again. I did have a recipe that I used from Rachel Ray that made ground turkey taste like sausage. That was pretty yummy. If you're interested, I can try to find it.

In the US the McCain Smilies seem to be fine. I haven't had an issue with them and I think a few others on the forum have tried them. I'm not sure if the ingredients are the same overseas, though. :\

[vicip]

Hi Kate

Did the Hash Browns have Onion in them? i always tend to avoid them as seem to react too - McCain smilies are fine for me here in the UK

I'm normally ok with sausages but tend to but butchers type ones rather than supermarket cheapies

Watch out for Hotdog sausages here, almost every brand has sugar in them!!

[ukbill]

I use potato starch all the time as a thickener and also eat hula hoops (plain salt flavour only)

Never had a reaction to them at all.

Varieties of potato vary greatly as to their sugar content (the labels in supermarkets are very misleading )

In the UK now there are only 2 varieties I can tolerate at all, however in Ireland I can eat any of their potatoes without a problem the same in the Czech republic where I have just come back form a weeks holiday.. Wonderful HFI safe food !

All the breads there are HFI safe! all of them! (well except for the fruit and Brioche etc type)

Hash Browns are always a problem and so are many British bangers (sausages) I think some of the "flavourings" are fructose and Rusk is frequently very sweet.

[charlie]

Hi Kate,

the trouble with alot of processed things is what they don't put in the ingredients I have found. The chances are there may be sugar contamination in the process but unless it constitutes a certain percentage of the final product they don't have to declare it. Also as colormist has said alot of frozen products are dipped in sugar water to get that crisp product when baked, for a long time chips never put this on the ingredient list (or dextrose) but now do.

another idea is the potato starch may have a fructose element to it as potatoes do have fructose in them, so maybe the concentration to obtain the starch may take some over the limit. As your daughter gets older and bigger you may find she can tolerate things better but for now the tiniest amount takes her over the edge. I wonder if (as she has more of the malabsorption problems with fructose and lactose) that maybe there is an overlap of absorbing sugars and possibly some starches and the lactose sugar in the small intestines where all these processes take place. I am sure that is what is going on with Megan as there are things she should be able to cope with if she has HFI but can't. Hula hoops are one thing she could never cope with. And potato starch is one ingredient of them. Chips and hash browns and potato faces always set her off too inspite of no sugar appearing in the ingredients. But as she has got older and certainly now she has hit 10 years old she seems to be coping better with things. I feel reassured by Lucky's idea that her liver has maybe matured enough to cope better with storing and filtering. But I feel convinced she has a starch problem too as she feels sick or goes hyper after a high starch meal. We shall see, we finally have a referral to Great Ormond Street metabolic unit next month so hopefully see someone who has experience of these things.

As for sausages, I always used to use gluten free ones (not the Tesco frozen as they are vile) but butcher ones but Meg always finds them too spicy so for a long time I made my own. I got an anthony worrell thompson mincer and bought pork and pork fat from the butcher as well as some sausage skin and actually they aren't too hard to make, takes a while to get the proportions right of fat so they aren't too dry but at least you know they are safe. If you can't get sausage skins then you can make a sausage shape and fry that. Meg seems to be ok though on Richmonds pork sausages, they are cheap and look like they should be crap but she really likes them and has them every morning with bacon for breakfast.

[fred]

Hi Kate

I see three potential culprits in the sausage that may cause trouble. They are rusk, white bread & dried herbs. It depends on how much fructose they contain and what her tolerance is.

I doubt if they would cause me a problem now in my old age but there is a potential risk there.

Fred

[kate]

Thank you everyone for your replies. This is really useful. It is interesting and really helpful to hear UKbill that you don't react to Hulahoops and that in general people are OK with McCains Smiles meaning that the potato starch reaction isn't fructose related. I'll have to try giving her both products again to ensure it wasn't a coincidence. I'm pretty sure that she is reacting to it though so it is also interesting to hear Charlie that Megan is the same. Megan and Jyoti seem very similar. Remind me, did she have issues with dairy since birth? Jyoti srceamed and screamed from the day she was born which was put down to dairy in my breastmilk. The fructose issues appeared as soon as we weaned.

The hashbrowns definetely don't have any hidden sugar ingredients as I rang McCains and asked - neurotic? Maybe! More frustrated than anything else. It is good to know that rusk can be sweet though. I'll be cautious with it in the future. And maybe I'll need to try making my own sausages. Can't quite face the thought of it at the moment as I'm currently 1 week into weaning our baby too, who thankfully seems to have no issues with fructose. Hooray!

Thanks again everyone.

[ukbill]

I think the problem with hash Browns is the variety of potato used..

All the safe potatoes available in the UK are the flour'y types not the waxy potatoes, now by its nature hash browns can only be made from waxy potatoes otherwise it would be more like fried mashed potato.

So I would suspect its a potato variety problem you have come up against.. In the UK only Maris Piper and King Edward are safe for me, all other varieties cause me problems with a Fructose reaction.

In Australia, Ireland, France, Belgium, Czech Republic and Germany I have very few if any problems eating any of the potatoes available.

It seems UK producers seem to like growing sweet Potato tasting varieties. boo hiss

[ukbill]

Regarding Hula Hoops, it might be that the last product to go through that filling out machine was BBQ flavour or Prawn Cocktail, not sure they are available in Prawn Cocktail flavour but both of these flavour's are very sweet and nasty

I have a large 6 pack of Quavers (Cheese flavoured potato puffs) and these taste very sweet to me, I cannot remember them being this sweet before.. It might be a change in flavour formulation or contamination but I really do not like them in this pack at all.

Just had a second thought.. I wonder if by any chance your pack had been cooked in Soya oil or veg oil contaminated with Soya oil?

That would do it for me. Took me years to figure out Soy oils and protein products are really bad for me.. and I know other HFI people who just cannot get on with it as well.

Only Soy Sauce (Kirkomans high salt variety) seems to be safe.