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The Health News Digest is running an informative piece this week on lactose intolerance. According to the article, an estimated 30-50 million Americans (or about 10 to 15 percent of the population) may experience the characteristic symptoms of lactose intolerance. The symptoms are caused by the lack of the enzyme lactase, which breaks down lactose, or milk sugar, into the more digestible simple sugars glucose and galactose. On the flip side you have Jeffrey Steingarten, "the Man Who Ate Everything
In most aged cheeses, lactose is largely absent. Most of it is carried off in the whey that is separated out during the cheesemaking process. Following removal of the whey, whatever small amount of lactose is left in the cheese is then consumed over the course of aging by active bacterial cultures and converted to the more digestible lactic acid. Therefore cheeses that are young and have a high water content such as Cottage Cheese or Ricotta will consequently have more lactose than more firm, older cheeses like Gruyère or Parmigiano-Reggiano. Yogurt is also quite digestible, since it is produced with lactic-acid producing bacteria similar to those in cheese.
Of course, lactose intolerance falls on a spectrum for many people—some people are okay with one or two glasses of milk while others feel symptoms even with hard cheeses. Where do you fall on the spectrum of intolerance?
About the author: Jamie Forrest publishes Curdnerds.com from his apartment in Brooklyn, New York, where he lives with his wife, his daughter, and his cheese.
Lactose molecule from sci-toys.com
View other entries from Serious Cheese.
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3 Comments:
Much as I enjoy Steingarten's writing, his pronouncement that lactose intolerance is a delusion really ticked me off. I LOVE milk, in all its forms, but unless it's well-aged, like parmesan, or comes with its own live bacterial cultures, like (good) yogurt, I have to take massive doses of acidophilus to be able to enjoy it without severe digestive problems (it can take me out for a day or more). Even then, I hardly dare touch a glass of plain milk or something like sour cream. And you'd be amazed at how many products there are out there that contain lactose--I'm still trying to figure out why my previous brand of multi-vitamin contained it.
msmla at 5:05PM on 07/17/07
I read Steingarten's piece and as much as I intellectually agreed with him, my body did not, and I can't tell you how cheesed off it made me that I couldn't consume anything dairy without problems. I didn't react well to the lactaid pills, and have therefore had to give up milk, cream cheese and ice cream permanently, because there is just no way. Hard cheese I can only manage in very small amounts, and I have even reacted to yogurt before. Thankfully, I can now buy lactose free/reduced milk, yogurt and sour cream. I can also tolerate goat cheese much more easily, but still only in small volumes. It's really frustrating - as Ms Mia says, lactose is in everything.
Basically, I don't want to believe in lactose intolerance for most of the reasons Steingarten mentions, but my body doesn't care what my brain thinks.
Peasantwench at 10:28AM on 07/18/07
I'm not convinced the discussing the severity of our lactose intolerance is the best conversation we could be having on a gourmand's website. Especially around lunch time.
JungMan at 12:51PM on 07/18/07