Answers to Questions from Readers, Part 17

Q. Is "Lecithin" a lactose milk product? It seems as if it is derived from a Latin root word for milk, and therefore I am afraid to eat anything containing it without taking a lactase tablet.

A. My dictionary shows it as coming from the Greek for egg yolk, which is quite correct. It has nothing to do with milk.

Q. I have noticed on frozen yogurt labels that most lack acidophilus. Does acidophilus lose something in freezing?

A. If you look at most yogurt packages, you'll see a label or a seal that takes about "live and active cultures." If the cultures aren't live then they won't do much of anything for you. Frozen yogurt has a problem this way. It's not quite as simple as saying that freezing kills the cultures - it seems to depend more on the exact manufacturing process as well as on how much culture is used - but finding frozen yogurt that is as tolerable as regular yogurt is going to be hit or miss. I know that I sometimes have very different reactions even to a familiar brand. All you can do is try different brands to see if one works.

Q. How many grams of lactose in a "serving" of milk chocolate?

A. I've never seen a number. I suspect that's because recipes for milk chocolate can vary sufficiently that analysis of any one is not very meaningful. For what its worth, there's probably a lot more chocolate than milk by weight in milk chocolate. A 1 ounce candy bar would therefore have much less than a gram of lactose. Not very much.

Q. I keep seeing ingredients like malted barley, malted this and malted that. I used to drink malts and malted milk when I was young. Is there any kind of milk in "malt"?

A. The only milk in malted milk is in the milk. Any malt by itself should be milk-free. And "malted" barley or any grain merely means sprouted grain.