Does anyone out there have any experience shopping for dairy-free foods?

I am working on finding a list of basic foods that are milk/egg free and any suggestions of good shops (even in Zurich) would be useful.

Coop have a couple of unsweetened soya milks that I am testing (think I will go for the cheaper version) but what I could really do with at the moment is somewhere that sells soya margarine or another dairy-free alternative.

Thanks

There is a shop called Biona, which I am assuming exists nationwide. I have seen it in several Swiss cities.

Thanks Carrie,

I Googled and came up with this website: www.bionat.ch

Is it the same one?

I doubt that's it. I'll have another look at the shop name when I'm out. I probably have it wrong!

On a related note... are there any supermarket-available brands of margarine here that do *not* contain dairy products? Everything seems to contain either butter or milk powder...

Sanissa Classic from Migros has no milk products - rein planzlich, pure vegetale, puro vegetale is written on it. We use that (my husband and older son are Vegan) and also purchase soy milk from Migros that has added calcium.

We get soy yogurts and such from the Reformhauses (heath food stores sort of) in the area.

This http://www.larada.org/catalog/index.php has all vegan products. I placed an order with them 2 evenings ago for meat substitutes and tofuttie "cream cheese" and it arrived today.

Jazz, where do you live? I was just at the Egli reformhaus today which is at the bottom of the big escalator in the Zurich Bahnhof and they have things there. I picked up vegan "nutella" there for my son

I found that the regular Migros 'budget' margarine is dairy free. It has really basic ingredients from what I remember. Even in the UK, I found that a lot of the supermarket 'own' brands saved money by not adding dairy. Asda was great for this.

Thanks Carmen, I hadn't noticed the Sanissa Classic - I'll have a look for it next time.

Migros also have the best tasting soya milk around - personal taste I guess, but both the brands at coop were a little powdery. I found a couple of other options at health food stores but the price was a little unreasonable and the taste not much better.

The best thing I have found in Switzerland is that there is suddenly so much more choice on breads made without dairy. I was pretty much stuck on normal sliced bread in the UK, but it seems they know how to make bread here without resorting to milk or butter...

Hi Carmen, thanks for the suggestion. I live in the St. Gallen, and although I'm not far away, I've still never been to Zurich. I will go eventually for two things, the first is IKEA (life's essentials) and the second is the Japanese shop in Zurich - Japanese food is brilliant for a diary free diet since it hasn't featured much in traditional Japanese cuisine. not so great for vegans though as fish stock figures in quite a lot of dishes.

Unfortunately many modern Japanese convenient foods contain lactose now... not so great if you lilke your instant noodles...

For those who are just lactose intolerant, lactose free milk seems widely available here - even the single-M Migros near our apartment has multiple choices, both one that actually bills itself as milk (in the tall gray box), and one that calls itself "milk drink", which comes in a smaller stupid box that is nearly impossible to reseal once you open it.

Both are reasonably good, at least on cereal, which is really the only thing I use them for.

Thanks for the advice, everybody. It sounds like Migros is the place to go, rather than Coop. Now, if only they sold wine...