Lactose Found Not Only In Cow's Milk

I don't get it.

I realize I seem to start a lot of posts this way. So either this says a lot about me or a lot about the world. I'm hoping for the latter.

But, really folks. This one is simple. All milkable animals have milk that is high in lactose. This is not exactly news. Lactose is the basic sugar and the basic energy source in the milk of almost all mammals, humans included. Every textbook that writes about milk and mammals will say this. Because lactose is such a basic energy source, the amount of lactose in similar animals, such as those humans draw milk from, is about the same. It's almost always around 4-5%. Humans are the exception, with 7% lactose in their milk, but they're not milkable animals in the normal sense.

Of course I've said this before myself, in There's Lactose in All Animal Milks, Dummy! Some might say that calling people dummies is not a good idea, because it makes them feel bad.

They should feel bad. Because they're wrong. Normally I'd say they're ignorant, an honorable condition as we're all ignorant about most details of most subjects. Are they ignorant? Ignorance should be random, that is, if people say ignorant things on a subject the mistakes should comment on every possible side of the issue. It doesn't here. The mistakes always fall on one side. People - always people selling, or at least touting, a product - always say that the product they're selling, made with animal milk, is somehow different from cow's milk in that it doesn't contain lactose, or has a small amount of lactose, or, as in the case of Jessica Chapman of the Minneapolis/St. Paul CityPages, that buffalo milk mozzarella is "kosher for lactose-intolerant folks."

It's not. I've said that before, too in the unmistakably titled Water Buffalo Milk Isn't Low Lactose Either. Some aged cheeses are very low in lactose and suitable for those with lactose intolerance, true. That's true regardless of the starter milk they're made from. Water buffalo milk has no special lactose properties that cow's milk lacks.

Nor does goat's milk, or sheep's milk, or camel's milk, all of which have had low lactose claims made for. Can it be sheer coincidence that every false claim about animal milk always falls on the side opposite cow's milk, a claim that benefits the seller? I don't believe it. Someone somewhere along the line is pushing disinformation, wrongness that seeps its way through the Internet and poisons all future mentions.

They're all wrong. Take a look at the percentages given at The Lactose Zoo page of my website. The table was adapted from Milk and Milk Products in Human Nutrition, 2nd ed, rev., FAO Nutritional Studies, No. 27, S. K. Kon. Rome: Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, p. 3.

If you want a second opinion list, check this table from A Handbook of Sugar Analysis, by Charles Albert Browne. It dates from 1912, and the high points are higher than estimated today but the same relationships are clear. In other words, this simple fact about animal milks has been solidly established in the scientific literature for a century. Only today, with product to push, have people "forgotten" it. Excuse me for being skeptical.