Vegan Is Love Cooks Up Controversy

If you're a regular here, you know that I've tried to make you aware of dozens of books that could be helpful to anyone who wants to control or eliminate the dairy in their dairy. That covers a huge range, from the basics of lactose intolerance to books on keeping kosher to non-dairy cookbooks to almost anything vegan. I've been doing this forever, since the 1990s in fact, when I added the Milk-Free Bookstore section to my website. (Remember websites? Apparently I don't, given how little updating I've done of mine lately. Most of the information there remains good, though. And just browsing through the titles should give you an understanding of the incredible range of materials out there waiting to be used.)

So I'm a friend to vegans. Always have been. Except, of course, for the nutty fringes, like PETA. Or Jenny McCarthy. I hate all nutty fringes, of all descriptions and varieties.

What am I to make of what one child psychologist called "the most disturbing children’s book I’ve ever seen"?

The book in question is Vegan Is Love: Having Heart and Taking Action by Ruby Roth

Book Description

Publication Date: April 24, 2012 | Age Level: 7 and up | Grade Level: 2 and up

In Vegan Is Love, author-illustrator Ruby Roth introduces young readers to veganism as a lifestyle of compassion and action. Broadening the scope of her popular first book That’s Why We Don’t Eat Animals, Roth illustrates how our daily choices ripple out locally and globally, conveying what we can do to protect animals, the environment, and people across the world. Roth explores the many opportunities we have to make ethical decisions: refusing products tested on or made from animals; avoiding sea parks, circuses, animal races, and zoos; choosing to buy organic food; and more. Roth's message is direct but sensitive, bringing into sharp focus what it means to "put our love into action." Featuring empowering back-of-the-book resources on action children can take themselves, this is the next step for adults and kids alike to create a more sustainable and compassionate world.

What makes the book controversial? Alyssa Giocobbe's blog, which is also where I found the child psychologist's quote, said the book:

explores complex themes like animal cruelty, big agriculture, and world hunger, and while the message is not overly heavy-handed, Roth doesn't dance around the idea that she believes eating meat will destroy the Earth and everyone we love, and soon — a heady concept for a kid, for sure.

It's unquestionably true that meat takes a larger toll on the environment than plants per unit, although it's not absolutely clear what the net result would be if we had to put many more acres under cultivation in order to go to an all-plant diet. I continue to eat meat myself, without guilt, although I try to keep portions to no more than 4 ounces at a meal. The gigantic servings that are the norm at restaurants and many homes are a waste and a recipe for obesity and health issues.

As an adult, I can make these choices for myself. Children cannot. I've listed many books that give parents help in putting and keeping their children on vegetarian or vegan diets. You can do this safely and healthily for a child, but you need to be even more vigilant than normal. As Giacobbe wrote:

John Bagnulo, PhD, MPH, who teaches nutrition in Kripalu Healthy Living programs, says that kids can be very healthy as vegans, but it's important to remember that it's not as simple as "just eat plants." For example, a vegan diet for children that is mostly grain, flour, and fruit juice is much more unhealthy than one that's mostly fruits and vegetables with, say, small amounts of fish, he says. "So many vegetarian and vegan parents embark on this journey with the misconception that kids have the same nutritional needs as adults," says John. "Nothing could be further from reality. Kids' brains are developing so fast and there is clear evidence that high-quality essential fatty acids, like those found in oily fish, are a factor in brain development. You can also get these nutrients in raw walnuts, raw pumpkin seeds, freshly ground flax seeds, and power-packed specific greens such as purslane." But getting them is essential. B12 and zinc are also critical.

This is a New Age-oriented site with heavy amounts of woo making these cautions. I'm quoting it in the hopes that the words coming from her have more of an impact than a warning from an old-fashioned carnivore like me. No matter how you raise your child, do your research. And keep away from the nutty fringes.

Delicardo Foodcards

Delicardo alerted me to a great deal. Because this is the season of allergy awareness weeks worldwide, they are giving discounts of their allergy foodcards as celebration. They're a German company but they have an English-language website.

DELICARDO Foodcards

DELICARDO Foodcards are food allergy and intolerance cards, also known as chef cards, dietary cards or restaurant cards, which were made to help people who suffer from adverse food reactions while eating out at home or traveling abroad, the ultimate form of eating out. DELICARDO Foodcards are currently available in Spanish, German and English meaning that most popular destinations are covered and, in the case that cards aren’t available in the desired language, specially translated cards can be ordered in the online shop.

With your cards you won’t have to eat at the hotel or go through long and complicated explanations with restaurant staff that may or may not understand what is being said.

For information about the range of cards available click here.

Standard DELICARDO Foodcards can be found here.

To create a personalised DELICARDO Foodcard click here.

The site now says that the cards are available in French and Italian as well. The exact nature of the discount isn't clear at a glance. It may be added when your order is calculated. Poke around the site to see what works best for you.

Food Allergy Awareness Week

This week is FAAN's Food Allergy Awareness Week

FAAN is of course the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxsis Newtwork, who is the leading advocacy organization for allergy awareness in the U.S. They do tons of good work and just as importantly make it easy for you to go out and advocate for your needs on a state and local level. The page I linked to in the first paragraph has a variety of links on it that will lead to activities, projects, and materials that will help you.

Allergy awareness isn't limited to the U.S. either. April saw the World Allergy Week sponsored by the World Allergy Association.

Anaphylaxsis Australia has its own Food Allergy Awareness Week starting May 14.

Allergy New Zealand follows with its Allergy Awareness Week from May 20-26.

Not all the attention is on food allergies and less is focused on milk allergy specifically, but all the fuss is worthwhile. Allergies are increasing everywhere and nobody really understands why. The consequences of allergies, especially in children, are severe and real, even if some people make light of the excesses that any movement is heir to. I've written dozens of entries about parents who used their own experiences with their own children to start businesses or organizations to help others. It's a great way to pay forward for the help that all of us have already been given by caring others.

Omira Oberland-Milchverwertun lactose-free cheese

Another lactose-free product announcement from DairyFoods.com that I somehow managed to overlook when it first appeared.

Omira Oberland-Milchverwertun lactose-free cheese

In Germany, Omira Oberland-Milchverwertung GmbH, a dairy that developed the Minus L Laktosefrei line of cheese, fluid milk and yogurt a few years ago, continues to grow its dairy products line, as well as expand use of its lactose-free dairy foods into other products. Most recently, the company debuted mascarpone cheese, vanilla sauce and ready-to-eat pudding, all made with its lactose-free milk. There’s also a new instant cappuccino mix based on a dried milk powder derived from this milk. In addition, Minus L Laktosefrei mozzarella cheese is being used on a namesake line of frozen pizzas.

That's not much information and the Internet for once fails me when I look for more. German speakers can check the company's MinusL lactose-free products website for all their lactose-free milk products.

Pierre's Lactose-Free Ice Cream

As you might imagine, I get a ton of unsolicited email because of this blog. People want to sell my lactose all over the world. Or sometimes they want to ship me lactose in bulk. Or a factory's worth of machinery that could be used to make, well, probably not lactose. Probably not anything I could spell or pronounce.

And much, much more. DairyFoods.com invited me to subscribe. Yeah, I laughed too, for a second. Then I realized what a wonderful opportunity that was.

You see, lactose-free milk products are dairy foods. I suddenly had an inside source that gave me announcements about new lactose-free products to share with you. High five.

The latest that popped up over there is Pierre’s Lactose Free Premium Ice Cream. It's not exactly breaking news, since apparently it's been available since early this year. I apologized in the last post for not getting the word out about a product as soon as it arrived. I feel a nice sense of warmth knowing that my little one-man tucked-into-holes-my-schedule blog is actually posting new things faster than the leading magazine in the dairy trade industry.

Anyway, I found the Pierre's website and everything about their new product line.

Pierre's introduces Lactose Free Premium Ice Cream

     Cleveland, OH – January 18, 2012 – Pierre’s Premium Ice Cream’s signature rich and creamy taste is now available – lactose free! Pierre’s is adding two flavors of Lactose Free Premium Ice Cream – Vanilla and Chocolate – to its famous assortment of delicious and innovative ice creams and frozen treats…satisfying even those who typically avoid ice cream due to an intolerance to lactose. Lactose intolerance is caused by a body’s inability to break down the natural sugars or lactose naturally contained in dairy products. Pierre’s Lactose Free Premium Ice Cream is made with the freshest, finest ingredients along with a lactase enzyme, which breaks down the lactose in the ice cream. Pierre’s Lactose Free Premium Ice Cream, available at most stores where Pierre’s products are sold, is packaged in specially designed red Pierre's Premium Ice Cream containers. The containers feature the words Lactose Free printed in a pattern along the lid rim along with a bright yellow Lactose Free logo located just above the scoop.The new flavors join the lineup as Pierre’s celebrates its 80^th year in 2012. The Cleveland-based ice cream company first opened in 1932. Beginning with three flavors, French Vanilla, Swiss Chocolate and Strawberry, Pierre’s now produces over 55 unique flavors and sells over 235 different products.

I don't know in what stores you can find Pierre's Lactose Free Premium Ice Cream. Probably at least in Cleveland, since that's where their factory is. You can get an order (minimum three) sent overnight by calling their 800 number. Details can be found on their Gift Shop page.

Kozy Shack Lactose-Free Dairy Pudding

The good people at Kozy Shack sent me an announcement for their new lactose-free dairy pudding, and I've been dilatory in posting it. So let me make up for that right now.

Fact Sheet

SWEET REVENGE: FIRST-OF-ITS-KIND LACTOSE FREE DAIRY PUDDING

 Kozy Shack® Makes Classic Pudding Available For Consumers Affected By Lactose Intolerance

* * *

The News: A first-of-its-kind, wholesome dairy dessert without lactose

Kozy Shack® Lactose Free Dairy Pudding in three delicious varieties: Rice; Tapioca; Chocolate

Consumers affected by lactose intolerance will be delighted to spot a new dessert with real dairy milk, but without the lactose. Kozy Shack® Lactose Free pudding is an indulgence made with wholesome natural ingredients delivering the same great taste and quality the brand is known for.

The Product: · Lactose Free · Made with Natural Ingredients · Good Source of Calcium · Made with Real Milk · No Artificial Preservatives · No Hydrogenated Oils · No Artificial Colors or Flavors · 130 Calories Per Serving · Kosher Dairy · Gluten Free

 Price: Suggested Retail Price $4.99/6-pack

Availability: Nationwide supermarkets

Kozy Shack® Noted as a “Supermarket Gem” by The New York Times for its ready-to-eat wholesome and delicious taste, Kozy Shack® traditional products meet today’s consumer lifestyle. For more than 40 years, Kozy Shack® has been providing the finest quality, ready-to-eat refrigerated desserts. Packaged for convenience, the products are available in ready-to-serve portions in the dairy cases of food retailers across the country. For this and other Kozy Shack® products, visit us at www.kozyshack.com or become a fan on Facebook.

Now the frustration. You can see a picture of the Lactose-Free cartons on the home page at KozyShack.com. But there's nothing about it on the Products page or anywhere else on the site. You may think this is weird behavior for a major company, but it's all too standard. I'm used to getting an announcement for a product and then not being able to find information about it on the company's own site. I still thank the people at Kozy Shack for thinking about me, but I need to remind them that getting the word out to their consumers directly is far more important.

Ötzi the Iceman Was Lactose Intolerant

Hey all of you out there reading this who are lactose intolerant. Whenever anyone makes fun of our shared condition remind them of one big thing: We're normal, they're mutants! [Cue scary music]

As I've written over and over again - here's a post from 2005 - most adult humans in the world are genetically unable to produce the enzyme named lactase, which digests the milk sugar lactose. For most of us, our parents were lactose intolerant and their parents were and theirs and so on all the way back to our earlier ancestors.

A couple of years later, big news hit the scientific community that shouldn't have been news at all: "Just 7000 years ago, Europeans were unable to digest milk, according to a new analysis of fossilised bone samples..." Most Europeans today are lactose tolerant - they produce lactase all their lives instead of stopping at some early age - because they are heirs to a long tradition of domesticating animals that produce milk. Milk is good for you - remember than every time someone claims that milk is poison - and people who could drink milk as adults had a small but significant advantage in living long enough to produce healthy babies. That allowed the mutation that kept the lactase going for life throughout European populations and their descendents, including many in the U.S. and Canada. Being able to use DNA to check on the actual genes of individual humans who lived thousands of years ago is a scientific marvel of the first order, but it has just confirmed what earlier scientists had been saying all along in this case.

And now similar DNA testing has been performed on the most famous neolithic European, to my knowledge the only one who has a name: Ötzi.



Ötzi the Iceman is a mummified body of a man who lived about 5300 years ago. Because he was buried in ice, he's much better perserved than almost anyone else from that era and scientists have jumped at the chance to examine every aspect of his being. He's known to have died at around the age of 46 from an arrow wound and had knee problems that may have made it harder for him to escape his enemy.

To get yet more tantalizing info, scientists have been working feverishly to decode his DNA to see what it tells them. And no surprise, no surprise, one of the obvious things that pops out is that he was lactose intolerant. As this story in the New York Times, Lactose Intolerant, Before Milk Was on Menu by Sindya N. Bhanoo reports:

[R]esearchers have sequenced the complete genome of the iceman, nicknamed Ötzi, and discovered even more intriguing details. They report in the journal Nature Communications that he had brown eyes and brown hair, was lactose intolerant and had Type O blood.

The lactose intolerance makes sense, said Albert Zink, an anthropologist at the European Academy of Research in Bolzano, Italy, who was one of the study’s authors.

"In early times, there was no need to digest milk as an adult because there were no domesticated animals," Dr. Zink said. "This genetic change took hundreds of years to occur."

The original study appeared in the journal Nature.
"New insights into the Tyrolean Iceman's origin and phenotype as inferred by whole-genome sequencing," by Andreas Keller et al., Nature Communications 3, Article number: 698, doi:10.1038/ncomms1701

Abstract

The Tyrolean Iceman, a 5,300-year-old Copper age individual, was discovered in 1991 on the Tisenjoch Pass in the Italian part of the Ötztal Alps. Here we report the complete genome sequence of the Iceman and show 100% concordance between the previously reported mitochondrial genome sequence and the consensus sequence generated from our genomic data. We present indications for recent common ancestry between the Iceman and present-day inhabitants of the Tyrrhenian Sea, that the Iceman probably had brown eyes, belonged to blood group O and was lactose intolerant. His genetic predisposition shows an increased risk for coronary heart disease and may have contributed to the development of previously reported vascular calcifications. Sequences corresponding to ~60% of the genome of Borrelia burgdorferi are indicative of the earliest human case of infection with the pathogen for Lyme borreliosis.

Hmmm. I'm blood group O and I'm lactose intolerant. But I have blue eyes, the result of a different mutation. We're all mutants, just in different ways. And yes, I mean you too.

Intolerance Myths

So much misinformation out there. And so many phony tests being pushed by the Internet.

I like this article, Common intolerance myths by Julie Deardorff of the Tribune Newspapers. I've cited her articles before and I'm happy to see that she's still on the job.

As always, I'm quoting selectively from the article for fair use. Please click on the link if you want to read the whole thing.

Claim: Food intolerances are caused by eating a repetitive diet; this overloads the immune system and the body responds by rejecting those foods.

Reality: "The gut-associated immune system is well-equipped to deal with loads of antigenic material, and there is just no evidence that it may become overloaded by exposure to large amounts of the same antigen," said Stefano Guandalini, founder and medical director of the University of Chicago Celiac Disease Center. Although the amount you eat never causes food intolerances, "if you are intolerant you will clearly have more symptoms if you eat more of that food," added Robert Wood, professor of pediatrics and chief of pediatric allergy and immunology at Johns Hopkins.

Claim: Hair sampling is a safe and noninvasive method of revealing nutritional deficiencies.

Reality: Hair is made up of a protein, keratin, that can be analyzed to determine its mineral content. That data can be used to find out if the body is lacking in certain minerals, but it can't tell you whether you have food intolerances, allergist Lee Freund wrote in "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Food Allergies." Double-blind studies haven't shown any diagnostic value for this test.

Claim: The IgG blood test is 95 percent reliable.

Reality: The test is prone to false positives and not considered reliable by any U.S. or European allergy or immunology society.

Miley Cyrus' Lactose "Allergy"

There are days when I long for the time when nobody knew what lactose intolerance was. Sure, that era was terrible, but no information is higher on the scale than bad information. Today lactose intolerance is an all-purpose joke that the ignorant trot out when they have nothing better to say.

Miley Cyrus is now nineteen, which means she's old enough to know better and old enough to take responsibility for her words.



Images like the above have appeared on the net, which show Cyrus as being disturbingly thin. Naturally, rumors about her having an eating disorder or anorexia sprang up. That's a serious subject and worthy of a serious response. Could be we so lucky? No, of course not.

Here's her actual twitter posts:



I hope I don't need to remind anyone reading this that lactose intolerance is not an allergy - it is, in fact, totally different in almost every way from true milk protein allergies. Gluten intolerance, more properly called celiac disease, isn't a real allergy either. Both are effects of food not being digested properly rather than immune system responses.

You, and by you I mean everybody out there within reach of a normal supermarket, can thrive on a complete, healthfilled, calorie-laden, and satisfying diet even if you can't have gluten or lactose, although the earliest parts of the transition period may be rough until you learn how to adapt. Glucose and lactose intolerances should never be excuses for poor nutrition, bad food habits, or losing excess weight.

Can Ms Cyrus make things even worse? You'd think not, and you'd be wrong. Among her many tweets was one showing her holding a bag of burgers from the popular California chain Carl's Jr. Her caption: "I can’t eat it. So I’m just gonna smell the shittttt out of it! My mouth is LITERALLY watering."

That's an eating disorder. That's the definition of an eating disorder. Or else that's stupidity of a magnitude that not even spoiled pop princesses should ever be allowed to get away with.

Me, I vote both.

Lactaid Discontinues Half-and-Half

It was less than two years ago that I made a big deal about Lactaid introducing a lactose-free true milk version of Halk-and-Half.

Oops. In our tiny niche of the supermarket world, products come and products just as quickly go. The disappearances are made with far less fanfare than the appearances, of course.

In case you blinked, the news was made public on Lactaid's Facebook page:

Erika Onorato
Why was lactaid half and half discontinued! I loved being able to have half and Half in my coffee everyday! Will it ever be brought back?
March 21 at 10:26am ·

Lactaid
Erika, we're sorry we discontinued your favorite LACTAID® product. Unfortunately, it was a business decision we made. At our next brand meeting, we'll be sure to bring up that our loyal fans are asking for it. Thank you for taking the time to let us know.
March 21 at 12:11pm

Lactaid still has more lactose-free true milk products than anybody else, to be sure. If you want them to continue you need to buy them. Every time my wife and I go visit her mother we take her shopping - she uses a walker now but zips around the store using a grocery cart faster than we can keep up - and always gets a couple of quarts of Lactaid ice cream. Let's hope she can always find it.

81-Year-Old Founder of Lactaid Still a Dynamo

I finally met Alan Kligerman two years at the NIH State of the Science Conference on Lactose Intolerance. Kligerman is the founder of Lactaid and the man responsible for the current public awareness of lactose intolerance. (Almost to a fault. The other day I saw yet another supposedly authoritative source recommend that people get Lactaid pills rather than lactase pills to alieve the symptoms of lactose intolerance. If they're not careful, Lactaid will lose its trademark.) I called him a ball of fire in that earlier post and I meant it: he exuded more energy during that half-hour sitdown lunch than I do all day.

Kligerman sold Lactaid many years ago and his big second product, Beano, in 2001, but still runs his pharmaceutical firm AkPharma, and is committed to introducing new products to the market even after 61 years in the business. An article in the pressofAtlanticCity website, Made in South Jersey: Developer of Beano testing product to heal wounds faster by Kevin Post, gave some details.

Today AkPharma is focused on research and development, but still manufactures one product — Prelief, which when added to coffee takes the acid out of it and provides calcium, a nutrient coffee drinkers lose. ...

Kligerman, 81, sees the company’s future in potential medical uses for the active ingredient of Prelief. ... he suspected that the active ingredient — calcium glycerophosphate, or CGP — was doing more than just removing food acid.

Preliminary studies suggested it was having an effect on the bladder cell walls, he said, so he commissioned studies confirming the bladder effects and also showing promising benefits of applying the compound to skin. ...

The study was conducted on 20 patients who were getting both knees replaced, with the CGP preparation applied to the surgical incision on one knee and a preparation without CGP to the other. ...

A report on the trial, published this month in the Journal of Wound Care, said the treated knees showed less swelling and inflammation, particularly in the first two weeks when the incisions were closing. The overall assessment of CGP-treated wounds was significantly better.

“The results of this study demonstrate that topical CGP application might speed wound healing,” the report said. ...

Such product development is a long way from the original Kligerman Dairy founded in 1918 in Atlantic City.

“This is thrilling to a kid who would go into a store and if they put two quarts of Kligerman milk in the dairy case they were doing him the biggest favor in the world,” he said.

The company today also has a pet milk called CatSip, produced and packaged in a Western dairy and distributed from there and from the Egg Harbor Township plant. CatSip is a fortified milk that is digestible by adult cats and dogs, which can be lactose intolerant, he said.

Even after working for 61 years, Kligerman said he’s still fired up by the creative potential of what has become a research and development firm.

“I’m probably the only member of the family who had fun in the dairy business,” he said.

I'm thrilled that's he still part of the business and still striving to do good. I hope that both of us get to have fun doing this for another 61 years.

No Scream Lactose-Free Ice Cream

Barry J. Beran, the President of No Scream Ice Cream and Dessert Company, LLC, kindly sent me an e-mail to give me the good news that his company is introducing a new brand of lactose-free true milk ice cream.

NoScream.com is the website and it contains the basics.

No Scream Ice Cream is a manufacturer of lactose free, dairy-based ice cream. We are dedicated to making delicious regular ice cream that can be enjoyed by those who experience digestive problems due to lactose intolerance, such as cramping, nausea, diarrhea and gas.

We use only the finest lactose free ingredients in all of our products. Our ice cream has no rice or soy and we are gluten free. Our goal is to make an ice cream which is extremely delicious and not just "tolerated" by those with lactose intolerance. We want those who avoid regular ice cream due to lactose intolerance to choose our ice cream because of its wonderful taste and not due solely to its lactose free feature. We are confident that No Scream Ice Cream will more than satisfy the most discerning ice cream connoisseur, whether lactose intolerant or not, because we strive to make a great ice cream which just happens to be...lactose free.

We currently offer five flavors: vanilla, chocolate, chocolate chip, mint chocolate chip and cookies and cream, with more flavors in development.

The company is frankly just getting started. Beran told me that samples have been "extremely well-received by several small stores in the South Jersey, Delaware and Maryland area" but I couldn't tell you exactly where to find it today. However, they'll be going into full-scale production shortly, he said.

If you're in the area keep an eye peeled for No Scream. Or maybe bookmark the webpage and check back in periodically. I'll certainly update you with whatever further news Beran sends me.

My Allergy Videos

Kathy Martini joined the long list of mothers who started specialty companies because of their children's allergies. And, as always, "Not finding the teaching tools she needed, Martini decided to create them herself."

An article, Mom's Videos Teach Kids About Potentially Deadly Food Allergies by Vickie Jurkowski in the Orland [IL] Patch gave the details.

With Martini as president and [Beth] Kingsbury-Puscas as director, the KatieCare Productions team also includes Martini’s husband Rob as well as a Web designer, photographer, editor, graphic designer, music producer, videographer and children.

Through song and dance, the Safe Food Friends – Katelyn and other current students or graduates of St. Mary Immaculate Parish School – teach kids about allergic foods, safe and unsafe snacks and the importance of reading labels. Scenes were filmed in the Plainfield area.

The videos, My Peanut Allergy Video with My Safe Food Friends, My Milk Allergy Video with My Safe Food Friends and My Egg Allergy Video with My Safe Food Friends, are recommended for ages 2 to 7. Each DVD/CD combo sells for $19.99 at www.KatieCareProductions.com.

To kick off 2012, Martini partnered with momshelpingschools.com to market the videos. The site gives 40 percent of purchases to a school or education foundation.

The My Milk Allergy Video has this info on it:

* What milk looks like & where it comes from.
* How to recognize some of the foods that are NOT Safe Snacks™.

* Ask if this is a Safe Snack™?
* Can you please read the label for me?

The Allergy Menu.com

Having trouble finding Healthy Recipes for your Multiple Food Intolerances?

Do you need 100 cookbooks because you can only find 3 appropriate recipes in each?

Stop wasting time with fruitless searching!

We’ve made it easy for you at The Allergy Menu.Com. A Global Online Community with access to:

‘The World’s First Customized Recipe Search Tool" for

‘Foodies with (Multiple) Allergies and Intolerances’.

Take a ‘Free Tour” or try it out for a week for just $5!

Let's start with the press release.

www.theallergymenu.com goes beyond the top 8 allergens (milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, soy & wheat), and allows users to customize their recipe search to eliminate over 20 different items, such as fructose, corn, amines, salicylates, oxalates, fructans, polyols & glutamates. The website also caters for specific diets such as the GAPS diet & the Gluten Free, Casein Free diet which are commonly recommended for children with Autism & ADHD.

"With our site you can focus again on what you would like to eat, rather than on what you can't eat", says Pauline. Everyone's dietary needs are different, so you will find a wide variety of foods on our site (including nuts for celiacs and eggs for vegetarians). If you can't tolerate these ingredients, the search function will eliminate them from your selection in one easy search.

"There are hundreds of beautiful recipes that we have carefully adapted to be safe and taste great too", says Michelle. "And we add new ones constantly. We are so proud of what we have achieved together. It has been a labour of love, and we are confident that it will help many people."

Visit The Allergy Menu at www.theallergymenu.com

The spelling should offer a clue: the site is actually based in Australia and I assume that the fees are in Australian dollars. They talk about a global community, though, and recipes are usually easily adaptable to local products. It may be worth a look.

Yoplait to Launch Lactose-Free Yogurt in Late January

Hey, everybody. We've been noticed!

Kendall J. Powell - isn't that the perfect corporate executive name? - is the CEO of food product behemoth General Mills, the $15 billion giant that owns practically every other brand you see in a supermarket. One of their more than 100 brands is Yoplait, which General Mills bought out last May. And Ken - yes, he's called Ken, just like a normal person - has big plans for the yogurt. Plans that include us.

CEOs have to prime investors of their plans and expected earnings on a regular basis because this affects the predictions of their stock prices. So they do quarterly conferences in which they lure in the suckers with glittery promises of good times ahead. The investment site SeekingAlpha.com put up a transcript of their General Mills Second Quarter F '12 Earnings Results Conference Call.

And here's the part that concerns us:

We've got some good innovation coming on Yoplait in the second half. We'll introduce Greek yogurt and granola parfaits and new flavors of our Greek yogurt in multipack formats. We're also launching a new line of lactose-free Yoplait yogurt. Studies show that around 15% of U.S. consumers are lactose intolerant, and the percentage is higher among the growing multicultural populations. Dairy products that provide a lactose-free benefit are growing at a double-digit rate, so our retail customers recognize the increasing importance of this trend. We think this is a good innovation for the Yoplait brand, and we'll support this new line with couponing, digital advertising and in-store sampling.

More digging found out that the lactose-free yogurt will be in stores at the end of January. You should see four flavors. Cherry is obviously one of them, since that's the picture they sent out, but I haven't found the other three. This is so new that nothing about it is available at the Yoplait website yet. Keep checking there, though. You'll sure to find coupons for these new products as they get rolled out.

Other lactose-free real milk yogurts exist now, of course. Lactaid has a line of them in four flavors, strawberry, vanilla, peach, and blueberry. Green Valley Organics has even more flavors: peach, plain, honey, blueberry, vanilla, and strawberry.

Brands go out of the lactose-free business quickly, though. The Continental lactose-free yogurt I wrote about in 2007 is no longer available. Neither is the company. If you really want lactose-free yogurt, be sure to buy it and keep it in business.

Does Quitting Dairy Makes You More Intolerant?

Kudos to The Toronto Globe and Mail for a solid answer to a question that I've gotten many times, If I quit dairy completely, will I become more intolerant?

Dr. Sheila Wijayasinghe breaks the bad news:

Given the large number of individuals who suffer from lactose intolerance, the possibility of developing a tolerance over time would be quite welcomed. Unfortunately, the body’s ability to produce lactase cannot be changed, so quitting dairy altogether does not increase intolerance as the amount of the enzyme remains the same.

The brainy doctor does understand the other side of the equation equally well and has some encouraging words:

Every individual is unique and has different amounts of the enzyme which is why certain people with lactose intolerance can take in larger amounts of dairy products than others. While you cannot build it up, you can test your tolerance level by gradually introducing small amounts of lactose containing products to see how much your body can handle.

Introducing small but constant amounts of lactase-producing probiotics, such as those in yogurt and other dairy products with live and active cultures or pills that contain the same, should increase tolerance as well.

A good answer, from one of the world's leading newspapers.

Happy Holidays

Happy Holidays. And I mean Happy Holidays. Accept no substitutes. This blog is for everyone. Bah and humbug to those who restrict.

30 Dairy-Free Recipe Substitutions

Big thanks go to Kelli Kerkman of Greatist.com for sending me a link to a great page they ran.

Greatist is a health and nutrition site whose goals sound like something I would write, which is always the highest praise. They even have a manifesto:



I'm not a manifesto kind of guy. I'm an information kind of guy. So what I liked was the page that I'm passing on to you, 30 Dairy-Free Recipe Substitutions by Jordan Shakeshaft*.

The list is mostly the basic common-sense advice that I've given out before, but as Kelli said to me, it's always good to have it all in one place for easy reference and I agree. In addition, the page is studded with links to the foods and substitutes mentioned, which is great for you and makes my life much easier, a double win.

Here's a couple of unusual ideas, though, just to whet your appetite for the whole feast.

# Nutritional yeast for cheese

Instead of topping those nachos with cheddar, try a sprinkle of nutritional yeast for a cheesy flavoring with less fat. The taste and texture may be a little bit different, but the creamy texture is pretty comparable.

# Mashed bananas for butter

The creamy, thickening-power of mashed banana acts the same as avocado in terms of replacing fat in baked goods. The consistency is ideal, plus the bananas add a healthy dose of potassium and fiber.

* Although that's an obvious pseudonym for the Earl of Oxford. Obscure literary reference/pun just for me.

Jezebel Loves Daiya

When I first learned I was lactose intolerant in 1978, me and a few Neanderthals, not only did nobody know nothing about LI but the number of dairy-free alternative products - all aimed at those with allergies - could be counted by a four-year-old. The ones that did exist, well, Coffee Rich was already around so they weren't all horribly bad, but you wanted to stay far, far away from the rest. Especially blocks of stinky white stuff that called itself non-dairy cheese.

A food industry that today gives you everything from hot dog and fries on a stick to egg foam with chive infusion can certainly get a mere substitute for cheese correct, can't it?

I've been listing non-dairy substitutes on my website for over 10 years. And I know that the look of the site hasn't been updated since then, and that some of the information there is obsolete, with new stuff missing. Sorry. That's a thousand hours I don't have. Much of the information is still good, though, and at least it gives you an idea of the range of items that are available, inside any one category and over all the various categories that non-dairy covers.

Two years ago, I let you know about the introduction of one particular non-dairy cheese that made a huge splash, Daiya Vegan "Cheese". Since then, Daiya has received much more praise around the web. Not only is it acclaimed as especially tasty, but it's not soy-based, often a problem for people with multiple allergies. Daiya uses tapioca and/or arrowroot flours, which they claim make it unusually allergen-free. (That's a change from earlier, when they used cassava rather than tapioca.)

Jezebel, a major women's blog, has a nice feature called Worth It:

Worth It, our daily recommendation of random things that we've actually spent our own money on. These are the things we buy regularly or really like, things we'd actually tell our friends about. And now we're telling you.

On November 25, 2011, the daily worth it was Daiya.



And the review is glowing.

Daiya cheese is the best substitute cheese of all the substitute cheeses!

I feel pretty qualified to say this — because I've tried so, so many kinds of fake cheese — the only cheese that melts enough to make a quesadillas, grilled cheese, and macaroni and cheese is Daiya. When I stopped eating dairy products, one of the biggest voids left in my eating habits was pizza. Every time I would make homemade pizza — I really, really missed pizza, you guys — it always failed my expectations. Until (surprise!) I tried making pizza with Daiya. It melts, and it melts unlike any other kind of fake cheese I've tried.

What that page doesn't say, and you should know, is that Daiya has a short shelf life once opened, no more than 10 days. You can freeze it, however, and only thaw as much as you'll need at one time.

Digestive Advantage Now Owned by Schiff

I've written about Digestive Advantage many times in the past five years. It makes a brand of probiotic that is aimed specifically at those of use with lactose intolerance. No need to look for all the past links, but I did a long post filled with comments from you in Digestive Advantage Update in 2007. Most of what was said there should still hold today.

Here's a cold slap of reality to the face. I remember what I wrote about Digestive Advantage in 2007. And in 2006 and in 2009 and 2010. Not only that, I went over and over and over that material when I put together my collection of blog pieces, Planet Lactose: The Best of The Blog.

[Stop now. Put everything aside. Go and order the book, either in print form or an electronic version. Really. It'll put all this great information into one place for you. End of commercial.]

Back to reality. No matter how new and burned into my brain this info is: for most of you out there it's old and buried and never seen.

One of the big pieces of news that I discovered when I resumed the blog recently was that Lactagen has stopped being manufactured I automatically assumed that everybody would know about the possibility of switching to Digestive Advantage. Except, of course, you don't. You needed to write me to ask.

OK, time to correct that huge oversight.

Digestive Advantage.

Schiff® Digestive Advantage products contain BC30 probiotics, a hardy strain of Bacillus coagulans -- these "friendly" bacteria, or probiotics, help your body maintain a balance of bacteria -- supporting your digestive system. Unlike some other probiotics, BC30 survives passage through harsh stomach acids and doesn't need to be refrigerated, so there's no worrying about whether you're getting the live cells you need.

Schiff® Digestive Advantage comes in four different formulas: Intensive Bowel Support, Lactose Defense Formula, Gas Defense Formula and Daily Constipation Formula, so you can choose the Digestive Advantage product that's right for you. Click on any image below to learn more about that Digestive Advantage Formula.

And more promotional copy:

Digestive Advantage® Lactose Defense Formula
No Need to Take With Every Meal!

Digestive Advantage® Lactose Defense Formula does not have to be taken with every meal because it combines lactase enzyme with probiotics to help break down lactose hours after reaching the digestive tract.

Digestive Advantage® Lactose Defense Formula helps prevent the GAS, BLOATING and OCCASIONAL DIARRHEA that many people with lactose intolerance experience after eating foods containing dairy.

Available at over 40,000 retailers nationwide including Rite Aid, Walgreen's, WalMart, CVS/Pharmacies, Albertsons, K-Mart, Kroger, Safeway and online at Amazon.com, Drugstore.com.com and DoctorVicks.com.

Other Ingredients: Vegetarian capsule (hypromellose, water, chlorophylin, titanium dioxide), Microcrystalline cellulose, Di-calcium phosphate, Stearic acid, Silidon dioxide.

Contains milk and soy.

Let me repeat: Contains milk and soy. I don't understand that, and I don't see either in the list of ingredients, but I take warnings seriously. The flip side is that you have no reason to take Digestive Advantage unless you are planning to eat dairy products, which will contain a zillion times more milk in them. It's only the soy warning that a very small number of you have to worry about.

The other piece of news in that information is that the huge multinational powerhouse pharmaceutical company Schiff bought Gananden, the parent company of Digestive Advantage, back in June of 2011. You can read the press release for more info.

The purchase also gave Schiff rights to Sustenex, which uses the Gananden BC30 probiotics. I've written about Sustenex in the past as well.

Is the sale to Schiff good news for us? Probably. Digestive Advantage now has the muscle of Schiff's billions in marketing, distribution, and grabbing of shelf space in stores to make it more visible. There's always a flip side. As a very tiny and unimportant piece of an empire, good sales aren't enough. Big companies frequently buy out promising little companies and then eliminate them if they don't turn into huge profit centers. The good news prevails for now. Probiotics are hot. Drug Store News reported favorably on the sale, noting that "The probiotics category is presently growing at more than 20% on an annualized basis, according to Nutrition Business Journal." As long as that's true, expect to be able to easily find Digestive Advantage conveniently on local shelves.

And if and when Lactagen ever comes back onto the market, it will find deep pockets to compete against. That's also either good news or bad, depending on which since you sit on. My side is that the more choices and the more products consumers have, the bigger their advantage is.

ConsumerLab Accuses Lacteeze of Lacking Lactase

ConsumerLab is a rival of the more famous Consumer Reports. It concentrates more on pills, powders, supplements, and remedies, though, a field that is rife with quacks and where even the legitimate products may not do what they claim.

Lactase is hardly in that class. It's easy to make, can be measured with proper federally-approved units, and does exactly what it's supposed to do. Like anything that is sold over-the-counter, though, some products have to be better than others. So when ConsumerLab did a report on lactase I didn't expect any surprises.

Wrong.

Can lactose-free foods -- like like lactose-free milk -- and lactase enzyme supplements really help people with lactose intolerance? They may -- but it depends on how much enzyme activity is in the supplement and how much lactose has been removed from the food.

ConsumerLab.com selected and tested ten different lactase supplements and three popular brands of lactose-free milk. The testing showed one lactase supplement to be ineffective and another with so little activity as to be of questionable value. But ConsumerLab.com also found many supplements that met their claims and may be helpful. The three lactose-free milks had no detectable lactose but only two provided a significant amount of vitamin D.

ConsumerLab.com found that an equal amount of lactase enzyme (enough to help with a high lactose meal) cost as little as 8 cents to as much as $6.79 depending on the brand of lactase supplement.

That's from the public page. You have to be a member to get the full report. Luckily, I am. Here's the full story.

The following lactase enzymes pills were tested (amount of lactase units):

CVS Pharmacy Dairy Relief Fast Acting (9,000 - 27,000)
Enzymedica Lacto (9,500)
Equate (Wal-Mart) Fast Acting Dairy Digestive Supplement (9,000 - 27,000)
Garden of Life Raw Enzymes (1,890 - 5,670)
KAL Lactase Enzyme (250)
Kirkland (Costco) Signature Fast Acting Lactase (9,000 - 27,000)
Lactaid Fast Act (9,000 - 27,000)
Natural Factors Lactase Enzyme 9,000
Nature’s Plus Say Yes to Dairy (3,000)
Puritan’s Pride Lactase Enzyme (1,750 - 5,250)
Solgar Lactase 3500 (3,500)
Source Naturals Lactase Digest (3,000 - 9,000)
Zygest Lactase Enzyme (1,750 - 5,250)


One liquid lactase:

Lacteeze

The three lactose-free milks:

Lactaid Fat-Free Milk,
Land O Lakes Dairy Ease
Organic Valley Lactose-Free Organic Fat Free Milk


All the lactase pills made their approved list, which as far as I can tell means only that they contain the amount of lactase that the manufacturers claimed.

There are other factors just as important. Tops on that list is whether the amount of lactase is sufficient for your needs. That's a touchy subject. Although the report cites a few studies, the truth is that nobody really knows what amount of lactase to recommend for the simple reason that each person is different. Some people seem to need only a basic minimum amount of lactase; others report requiring multiple pills. How your system reacts to the lactose in food varies with every mouthful. It's a frustratingly impossible subject to research. Over the years, however, the standard in the marketplace has been that a basic pill contains 3,000 units and an "extra-strength" pill contains 9,000. You might be able to get by with a smaller quantity, but I have always stated that anything below 1,000 units is a worthless waste of money. The KAL pill wouldn't make my approved list. In addition, the lactase in it is just one of a mixture of other digestive enzymes and I don't know if any of them are useful or in the right quantities. I never recommend any pills that contain such a mix. Garden of Life Raw Enzymes and Enzymedica Lacto also are mixes and not recommended by me. ConsumerLab noted that they are also the most expensive products per unit. As you would expect, the Costco and Walmart brand products were the cheapest at 8 and 12 cents per 9,000 units. Chewable tablets were slightly more expensive, Lactaid Fast Acting Vanilla Twist Flavor at 20 cents and CVS Pharmacy Dairy Relief Fast Acting Vanilla Twist Flavor at 21 cents, but some people - kids especially - may prefer them. The health food store brands were consistently more expensive.

So what about Lacteeze? Well, lactase pills are meant to be taken along with food to counteract the lactose in them. They work in your digestive tract. Lactase liquid, on the other hand, is a completely different type of lactase that is designed to be added to milk or other liquid dairy products and "digest" the lactase before it reaches your mouth. That's what Lacteeze liquid is. (Lacteeze, which is a Canadian product, also makes pills, which evidently were not tested.) I've recommended Lacteeze for years, because they came to our rescue when all the American brands of liquid lactase went off the market. I've never heard any complaints about them, although I always warn people that nothing works for everybody. I simply can't imagine why ConsumerLab couldn't find lactase in the Lacteeze bottle. Could their tests simply not be designed to find that variety of lactase? It's a mystery. I'm very hesitant to steer people away from a product that been a major company for decades on the basis of this odd finding.

Lactose-free milk, of course, is made by adding liquid lactase to regular milk. The process is similar to what you can do at home, although it is scaled up to industrial levels. All three milks in the test had lactose levels below what their test labs could detect. That doesn't necessarily mean absolutely zero, but so close that any difference is meaningless. All were about the same price, although the organic milk was a bit higher. The claim that one milk - Dairy Ease - didn't provide "a significant amount of vitamin D" is bizarre and possibly spurious. In reality, that meant that the carton didn't say how much much vitamin D was present and so they read that as zero even though Dairy Ease stated that vitamin D was added. That's shoddy work at best.

Overall, the report yields results pretty much exactly what I would expect. Store brands are cheaper than name brands, and mainstream brands more expensive than natural food items. Buy pills either as cheap as you can find, in whatever form you like, or pay a little more for the convenience of buying them where you usually shop. Lactase is lactase, as long as you buy sufficient quantities of it and that's all you're buying.

I'll try to investigate the strange finding about Lacteeze.

Lactaid Reintroduces Lactose-Free Yogurt

Why aren't there more lactose-free dairy products available in stores? Because you don't buy them.

You can't imagine how much I hate having to write that. But I've been watching store shelves for over 30 years. I've seen dozens of products come into the market - some with huge marketing campaigns - and then quietly disappear. They go away because they don't live up to sales expectations.

Will that ever change? I'm doubtful. For most people taking lactase pills or eating small amounts of dairy is completely sufficient. Those people with real need are the ones with allergies who have to avoid all dairy. Lactose-free won't work for them. Same for vegans. And lactose-free products have another strike against them. Low-selling products are always going to be more expensive than their equivalents. Lactose-free milks are finally available pretty much everywhere but they are always much more expensive than regular milks.

Yet companies keep trying. Why? I honestly don't know. No matter. It's a great thing for those of us who are always looking for more variations.

The biggest name in lactose-free products is Lactaid. Lactaid makes a more complete line of lactose-free true dairy products than anyone else. There's the milk in whole, 2%, 1%, and fat-free varieties, calcium-enriched in all four varieties, Fit & Creamy in low fat and nonfat, and chocolate, not to mention Egg Nog and Half and Half. They also make cottage cheese and five flavors of ice cream.

And now yogurt. They've made it in the past and it went away. But here it is again. Four flavors: vanilla, blueberry, peach, and strawberry. They're marketed in the standard 6 fl. oz. cup and a multipack of four 4 fl. oz. minicups.

Lactaid has a Product Locator so you can search by your zip code to see if it's sold close to you.

Will it survive? That's up to you.

Frozen Yogurt - The More Bacteria the Better

Are germs driving us crazy? Apparently, yes. I walked into a nice diner in Greenwich, CT yesterday and the first thing I saw was a hand sanitizer set up at the doorway. I care more about the staff having clean hands. There's a tirade waiting to happen about the omnipresence of anti-bacterials creating a races of super-resistant bugs, but having caught a bug myself I'm too tired to summon up the energy.

Being the perverse sort that I am, my mind latched on to the counterexample, the times when more bacteria are better for you, not worse. That's the world of probiotics. Yogurt is the most famous and most familiar example. The "good" bacteria in yogurt are helpful in many ways. For those of us with lactose intolerance, their best feature is that they literally manufacture the enzyme lactase, and lactase is what digests lactose. That makes yogurt "auto-digesting," which means that it is better tolerated than almost any other dairy product.

The catch is a small one. The bacteria has to be in "live and active" colonies. Dead bacteria don't manufacture lactase. They don't hurt you any either. The bacteria begin to die off as soon as conditions are no longer optimal for them. By the time you eat any yogurt, there will be fewer good bacteria than in the beginning. No big deal.

One thing that leads to sub-optimal conditions is cold. That leads to an immediate and obvious question: can frozen yogurt still have live and active cultures? This question is huger than ever since the craze for frozen yogurt has moved from the trendiest portions of the coasts (see Yogurt is Hot Hot Hot from back in 2008) to every mall in America.

The answer to the big question is a qualified yes. Some cultures can survive the production process. Probably as importat, the newer, tarter frozen yogurt recipes depend on more of the lactose being converted to lactic acid. It's likely that most of what you try will be well tolerated.

Just for fun, I'm passing along an interesting chart I found on the Yogen Früz blog. I'm not showing it to endorse Yogen Früz. I've had it, and it's fine, but I have no idea how well it compares to the rest of the frozen yogurts in the world. Moreover, any chart issued by one company to tout its superiority is suspect. It may be perfectly accurate, but you shouldn't expect it to tell a full and objective story. All I want it to accomplish is to show to you that an independent testing agency, in this case Brazilian Proteste Consumers Association, can find cultures in frozen yogurt.



More is better for cultures. If you have any concerns, ask at the shop if they have the equivalent numbers available there or on their website. I'm just happy that a hot trend turns out to be something that we in the lactose community can enjoy, for a change.

Allergy Free Cook Bakes Bread

I found this tasty bit of promo from Laurie Sadowski sitting in my email, which means I have to share it with you.

THE ALLERGY-FREE COOK Bakes Bread


Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free, Egg-Free

Highlights include advice on how to:
* convert your kitchen into an allergy-free zone
* interpret ingredient labels to find hidden allergens
* adapt and customize your favorite recipes
* discover the nutritional qualities of over 20 gluten-free flours
* make rich, moist breads without eggs or dairy products

ISBN # 9781570672620 • $14.95 • by Laurie Sadowski



French Bread • Focaccia • Breadsticks • Scones • Gingerbread • Crackers • Multi-Grain Breads

Savor the irresistible aroma and tantalizing flavor of freshly baked bread, straight out of the oven—even if you have food sensitivities! The Allergy-Free Cook Bakes Bread proves that you don’t have to be a magician to work magic in the kitchen. Culinary wizard Laurie Sadowski has crafted an amazing collection of gluten-free bagels, biscuits, loaves, muffins, scones, and specialty breads that rival their traditional counterparts in every imaginable way.

These wholesome, delectable, gluten-free baked goods are completely vegan—free of eggs and dairy products—and many recipes are also free of other common allergens, such as legumes, nightshades, tree nuts, peanuts, seeds, and soy. Not only can you enjoy your favorite baked goods once again, but your friends and family will also dive in with gusto. The Allergy-Free Cook Bakes Bread transforms restrictions into possibilities and makes it easy for anyone challenged by food sensitivities to eat safely, compassionately, and nutritiously—right down to the very last scrumptious morsel.

You can get the book through the usual outlets, but the URL given in the email goes to Book Publishing Company, which bills itself as a publisher of vegan, vegetarian, raw, & natural health books.

Thanks, Laurie.

Lactagen No More

I usually comment on comments inside that post, but this deserves a whole new post of its own. The news is that big.

That comment was in a post called Lactagen Response - It Worked for Her.

I took this stuff about four years ago now and still can drink milk now. It seems like it worked then and is still working fine. I do like my dairy very much. I do notice that if i over do it i still am fine. I was talking to a co-worker about this stuff and she wanted to get some but it is not for sale any more????? what happened??????

What's Lactagen? I've devoted huge blocks of text to it over the years. The first was one of the earliest posts I ever made in this blog, a full six years ago, Lactagen - Questions, No Answers. That started out with some eye-popping prose:

Lactagen claims to be a cure for lactose intolerance. That's right: a cure. Take the product for 38 days and you'll never be bothered by lactose again.

Except, oops.

UPDATE: Lactagen no longer uses the word “cure” in its marketing. Its website information has also changed since this was originally posted.

The quote from the Lactagen site also caught your attention:

Lactagen's™ one-time 38-day patent-pending formula allows the gradual and painless re-introduction of dairy into the digestive system. The program painlessly trains the body to be able to digest dairy products without the usual painful reactions. The combination of taking yogurt with live cultures, having meals with the formula, taking specific dosages and with the combination of Lactose, Tricalcium Phosphate, Lactobacillus Acidophilus, FOS and Cellulose Gum and Silica, the body learns how to digest dairy products.

So many more people wrote to me about Lactagen that I did a blockbuster post in 2007, Lactagen: The Big Update, compiling many of the testimonials to its effectiveness - or lack of.

And then in 2009 a quiet press release from Lactagen that I posted under the heading Lactagen Prepares to File For New Drug.

Ritter's first compound, RP-G28, has been developed for the treatment of lactose intolerance. RP-G28 will effectively stand out as the first FDA-approved drug for the treatment of lactose intolerance.

For me that was the biggest news, although I realize that few thought of it that way. I never understand how Lactagen worked. It's known that probiotics that contain certain forms of "good" bacteria have the ability to manufacture lactase in the colon. This lactase can digest the lactose that your body misses. So instead of fermenting and creating gas in the colon - the cause of most peoples' problem with lactose - the lactose is eliminated. This sounds great, except that establishing what's called a colony of those good bacteria in your colon is sometimes difficult and not always permanent. They can get pushed aside by other types of bacteria that ferment lactose. They also get killed off every time you take a dose of antibiotics. Several probiotic products are marketed to people with lactose intolerance, such as Digestive Advantage, that you are supposed to take daily because of this.

How did Lactagen achieve permanence? To this day I have no idea. That's why I've always been iffy about recommending it. I'm innately suspicious of anything I can't understand.

The folks at the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, know a thousand times more about the science than I do, though. If they gave approval to a treatment I would tell the world about it immediately.

Forward to 2011. And the comment that Lactagen can't be found anymore. So I hie over to the Lactagen site. And what I see there is very interesting.

Thank you for your interest in Lactagen® and Better Digestion™. Ritter Pharmaceuticals is no longer offering Lactagen® and its other dietary supplement products in order to focus on new products in the development pipeline. It is important to note that these products were not taken off the market due to health or efficacy concerns. We have enjoyed this opportunity to help thousands of individuals around the world find relief for their lactose intolerance symptoms.

One of these new exciting products in our pipeline is called RP-G28. RP-G28 is a second generation product geared towards treating the symptoms of lactose intolerance long-term. The product is currently being considered for FDA approval and is entering Phase 2 clinical trials. It stands to become the first prescription drug for the treatment of lactose intolerance. Ritter hopes to offer the first FDA approved treatment for the symptoms of lactose intolerance by 2014.

So Lactagen is gone - has been since January 2011, from what I gather - and Andrew Ritter is betting the whole company on that second-generation version he announced in 2009. Five years is hardly an unusual length of time to get FDA approval for a drug. (I dislike the term drug in this context, although I understand its use as shorthand. Probiotics are not drugs in the usual sense.)

Press releases on the site indicate that the treatment is getting favorable attention.

November 2, 2010

Ritter Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a biological therapeutics company with a focus on digestive diseases, announced today that it has been awarded a grant by the United States government program, the Qualifying Therapeutic Discovery Project (QTDP).The QTDP grant supports the development of Ritter Pharmaceuticals' flagship product, RP-G28, as a treatment for the symptoms of lactose intolerance.

There were over 6,500 applicants seeking $1 Billion in grant funding. Ritter Pharmaceuticals received the maximum awarded amount per project. ...

A unique mechanism of action gives RP-G28 the potential to be the only therapeutic regimen designed to impact the natural factors of the disease and alleviate the symptoms of lactose intolerance on a long-term basis. Phase 2 clinical development is underway.

CenterWatch.com reports that volunteers for clinical trials are being sought. Those announcements were made on June 1, 2011 so I assume that the trials are already under way. I found a page with complete information about the trials on ClinicalTrialFeeds.org.

But the mills of the FDA grind slowly. Even under the best of circumstances you'll have to wait three more years. And that's assuming FDA approval. What if they don't approve? That happens with fair frequency. That's also why drugs are so expensive. The approval process takes money and time, which is also money. And the product has to live up to its claims.

Anything can happen in three years. I make no predictions. Not even as whether I'll be blogging to report on it.

I'm At the Small Press Author Showcase Friday

The Barnes & Noble superstore at The Mall at Greece Ridge coordinates what it calls a Small Press Author Showcase each year. They invite local authors who have books they self-published and arrange a big meet & greet with a couple dozen or more authors and lots of readers.

This year's gathering is

Friday September 30, 2011 7:00 PM

The Mall at Greece Ridge Center
330 Greece Ridge Center Drive
Rochester, NY 14626

You can go to the B&N site and get a map and driving directions to the store.

To be honest, that tiny map isn't very good. The mall only goes up to Long Pond Rd, not Mitchell. The store is on the Long Pond Rd. side. Try this Google map instead. There's easy access from I390.


View Larger Map

The actual event will be in the mall corridor outside the store, not in the store itself. It should run two hours, from 7 to 9. I'll be there with copies of Planet Lactose: The Best of the Blog and my collection of science fiction short stories, Tyrannosaur Faire. Something for everybody.

Here's something else you ought to know. While I'm certainly pleased that B&N holds this event and it's a great experience for all the authors involved, this will be the only time you'll be able to buy my books at B&N. The corporate policy at B&N - and at Borders before it went out of business - is that they don't carry self-published books. Period. Not even from local authors. If you aren't a big enough publisher to have an account at one of the major book distributors, the big chains won't deal with you. This is a Community Relations event, something that the individual store community relations manager decides to do. It's the only one I know of in the country by that name at B&N.

If you're anywhere in the region and free on Friday, stop down at The Mall at Greece Ridge. Remember, dozens of other worthy authors will be getting their one day of public acclaim. Support us and support small presses. Plus there's a million square feet of mall around the corner. Gotta love it.

Valio Terminates Real Goodness Lactose Free Milk in U.SL

Back in 2009 I had a very exciting announcement to make. Valio, the huge Finnish manufacturer of lactose-free milk products, was entering the American market at last. They contacted me about getting the word out and I was happy to do so, in Valio's Lactose-Free Milk Is a Hit!

I just got a comment on that page complaining that the milk could no longer be found. So I did a search and came up with this undated message that is all that's left on the realgoodness.com website.

Dear Friends of Real Goodness:

Thank you for your loyalty to our brand over the past two years. In the limited time we have been in market in the United States, Real Goodness has helped thousands of people overcome the symptoms of lactose intolerance and enjoy a healthier and tastier lactose-free milk.

We regretfully announce that our company has made the decision to terminate production at this time. Our final shipment to retailers occurred last week. This product has enjoyed widespread success in Europe. However, the product did not achieve its sales targets set out in our strategy despite the fact that the product was unparalleled in its ability to deliver great taste and superior nutrition.

On behalf of Valio USA, I want to thank each of you for supporting Real Goodness.

What can I say? While a small percentage of people with lactose intolerance cherish each and every lactose free product on the market, the greater number ignore them. They either avoid real milk products, opting for artificial substitutes or no milk-like substances at all, or just have real milk in smaller quantities. The lactose free market has always been small and chancy. I've watched dozens of products come into the market and suddenly disappear over the years.

I'm very sorry about this one, because I thought Valio had the money and marketing clout and savvy to pull it off whereas small companies can't compete nationally. It's a shame.

Where Is the Whey? Everywhere.

Holly asked me a question that is much deeper and puzzling than it looks at first. I'll try to cut through some of the confusion.

I recently had the ALCAT test done and it shows I have no reaction to casein and a severe reaction to whey. This surprized me because I have never had a noticeable reaction to dairy. I was told that it doesn't mean that I'm lactose intolerant - just whey intolerant. My question is: hasn't the whey been cooked out of evaporated milk, condensed milk, caramel, cream cheese, and most cheeses? I would think so but I can't find an answer anywhere.

Milk is like every other food we eat, a mixture of chemicals that we group into three basic families: the fats, the carbohydrates, and the proteins. That's not even including the pure minerals, notably calcium, potassium, and phosphorus, that make milk so healthy. Or the micronutrients like vitamins. All of these float in a vast sea of water. A full 88% of a glass of whole cow's milk is water. Carbohydrates - our old friend lactose - make up 4.66%, fats, 3.34%, and proteins 3.29% That tiny fraction of a percent of discrepancy is referred to as ash, and contains all the minerals and anything else that doesn't fall neatly into one of the big three categories.

The proteins, though comprising the smallest bulk of the three majors, has the most complex set of subfractions. For our purposes, all we need to concentrate on are the two main families of proteins, the caseins and the wheys. A table at an Ohio State website breaks down the families into five types each.



Having five types of casein is confusing enough. The wheys are worse. There are at least two immunoglobulins and several minor proteins.

And I'm not even going to talk about the Proteose-Peptone Fraction, which is defined as whatever is "not precipitated at pH 4.6 from skim milk previously heated to 95-100° C for 30 minutes." (I quoted that from the National Dairy Council. That Ohio State site gives slightly different numbers. Don't you love it when experts disagree on basics?) Those are at least four proteins that have some relationship to both the caseins and the wheys and I don't understand them at all. Everybody else ignores them, however, and so shall I.

In liquid milk, all the proteins, like the fats and the carbohydrates, are in a colloidal suspension. "A colloid is a substance microscopically dispersed evenly throughout another substance." You can't, therefore, go through milk and pick out the proteins very easily. It takes high-technology techniques like the membrane process of ultrafiltration, some called "very specific enzyme precipitation," or the ion-exchange processes.

Or cheesemaking. Rennet, produced in the stomachs of most mammals, is an enzyme that coagulates casein, clumping the individual molecules into larger lumps that can be much more easily separated from the rest of the liquid.

Why then do food processors and scientists need such high-tech procedures to do what villagers and nomads have done for thousands of years? Purity. Those curds of soft cheese that are formed are mostly casein protein. But they also contain some lactose and some fat and some water. And some whey. As long as there is water present, some whey will be there as well. The aging process also hardens the cheese, which is done by almost literally squeezing out the remaining water. Additional heating of cheese can harden it even further. Most of the lactose is removed with the water, which is why true milk cheeses can be sold as lactose-free. Most of the whey goes with the water as well. I can't guarantee that all of the whey goes, though. A few micrograms of remaining lactose is meaningless for anyone who is lactose intolerant. A few micrograms of remaining whey protein could trigger a reaction.

And that's where we come back to Holly's question. Processed dairy products may be low in whey, even negligible in whey for practical purposes. Allergies are impractical. They can affect people in doses too tiny to be otherwise noticed. That's exactly why those with severe dairy protein allergies are advised never to eat any dairy product. Removing every last molecule of protein is a task for a scientific lab, not a food processor. This difference is the main reason for the vast gulf between lactose intolerance and a milk allergy. You can take chances with lactose. Allergies require extreme caution and care. Some people, like Holly apparently, have mild symptoms to no symptoms at all. For others, the symptoms are frequent and severe. For those people allergies are serious and must be treated that way. And the more you know about food, its composition, and its processing, the better off you are.

A Quick History of Lactose Intolerance

Winnie wrote me to ask "if you can give me an idea of what are the best places to talk to a lactose intolerant community online. In addition, what are the typical questions you get on lactose intolerant."

Here's what I wrote back to her.

LI is a strange problem. It's not medically serious so it doesn't attract communities in the way that life-threatening or -altering problems do. People have tried but they never grow or last. Probably the closest approximation today is Alisa Fleming's GoDairyFree.org. She's focused on sharing recipes and foods that don't contain milk rather than specifically lactose, although in many cases that's the same thing.

I gave the history of LI in my book Milk Is Not for Every Body. Nobody realized that such a condition existed until about the 1960s. That's when doctors and anthropologists went around the world testing native groups. They kept finding LI everywhere. But most of them didn't really notice because dairying was not part of their heritage so they didn't have large amounts of lactose in their cultures. Only northern Europeans and their descendants and colonies did.

There's a long history of not wanting to talk about intestinal problems in those societies. Since large amounts of lactose produce both diarrhea and particularly smelly flatulence, it was socially embarrassing to talk about. And doctors knew practically nothing about it, so all they did was recommend removing all milk from the diet. Full labeling regulations by the FDA were still in the future so it was often hard to tell whether a processed or baked food contained any milk in the first place. Lists of foods to avoid included such things as french fries and peas. (Presumably because sometime somewhere lactose was involved in the processing, though I've never tracked down exactly where.)

The food labeling requirements helped a lot. But the breakthrough was when a Dutch pharmaceutical company, Gist-Brocades, invented a method for producing commercial lactase, first a powder to add to liquid milk and remove the lactose and then a pill that could be taken with food. The American company Lactaid bought the rights to make it here. Their first pills were marketed in 1984. It was in the early 1990s, though, that they entered into a product war with a competitor, Dairy-Ease. Spending tens of millions on television commercials, they made the American public aware of LI. It became a regular joke for late-night comics and the regular ailment for the comic sidekick in movies and television. Making a joke of an ailment was oddly helpful. It's hard to be afraid of something that's a mere joke.

Since then all the attention has turned to food allergies (and celiac disease, which used to be called gluten intolerance). These are much more serious. Allergies primarily appear in babies unlike LI, which primarily appears in adults (except as a temporary condition after an intestinal ailment in babies), and is both much more difficult to deal with and, in a very few cases, life-threatening. There are hundreds of communities for these problems. The milk allergy community will provide some info about milk products that is useful for LI. But all the great majority of people with LI really need to know is to limit the quantity of lactose taken in at any one time and use lactase. Avoiding milk products really isn't necessary. There isn't much need for a community under these circumstances.

Many people still insist that isn't sufficient. It's difficult to know what to say to them. You can look at the results I posted in my blog about a year ago about the NIH State of the Science Conference on LI. Paper after paper was presented that said essentially that it was next to impossible to induce any symptoms at all in a laboratory setting, no matter how much lactose is given, making it impossible to study. If people insist than any trace of lactose triggers symptoms I'm sympathetic, but I have no medical information to present. Is it possible that much of the reaction for many people is psychological rather than physiological? Apparently. But LI is not life-threatening, so there is zero money for research. The medical studies are on tiny and often unrepresentative groups. We still don't know the answers to many basic questions.

If and when some of these answers emerge, you can be sure that I'll post them here.

Planet Lactose: THe Best of the Blog Now on Amazon

My enormous 86,000 word compilation of posts, Planet Lactose: The Best of the Blog, is available everywhere in every kind of format, as I announced with great relief a few days ago. On Amazon? Yes, even on Amazon. It took me those few extra days and most of the waking hours in them to reformat the book so that it looked exactly right on a Kindle and get the book properly uploaded to Amazon. Proof: there it is in all its glory. It's exactly the same edition as the one published electronically everywhere else. Remember, you can get a .mobi edition that is readable on the Kindle through Smashwords. However, you can also download directly from Amazon if you have a standard Amazon account. If there is any format you'd like to see it in that's not already covered, let me know and I'll see what I can do. I started with 5 1/4" flopy disks, proceded through 3 1/2" "floppies" (which were hard), true hard drives, and now solid-state drives so I think I can cope.