Lactose Free Yogurt and Cottage Cheese

J. D. from Charlotte, N.C. writes:

Why aren’t lactose-free dairy products made into yogurt or cottage cheese? I haven’t found such products at the market, and they would be a good addition to the lactose-free selection.

Unfortunately, J. D. from Charlotte, N.C., had the misfortune to write Ed Blonz, Ph.D., On Nutrition instead of me. You can read Dr. Blonz's answer here.

Here's a better answer from me.

There do exist lactose-free yogurts and cottage cheeses. Lactaid makes a 100% lowfat cottage cheese. It also makes lactose free American cheese slices and ice cream.

Continental makes lactose free yogurt in three flavors.

You can find a listing of reduced lactose milk products in my Product Clearinghouse on the Reduced Lactose Milk Products page.

You can also find store brand versions of these products in some locations. I don't keep track of them because they are too localized, but just ask your store manager.

So why the ignorance about these products? Simple. They don't sell. People with lactose intolerance are just too small of a specialized market. They don't go out of their way to buy lactose free substitutes. Either they do without or they take a lactase pill and keep on eating their favorites.

If you want to support these products, great. Buy them. Request them if they're not available in your local stores. Use that Lactaid product request form I linked to earlier. But if you don't buy them, they will go away. Again. Many lactose free products have disappeared from shelves because sales were too low. If you want to keep them on store shelves, it's totally up to you.

Babies and Probiotics

Secondary lactose intolerance, sometimes called temporary lactose intolerance, is something that hits about 10-15% of all babies at some point in infancy. It occurs when their delicate intestines are damaged by an illness or medication so that the ability to manufacture the lactase enzyme is knocked out. As the name implies, this is usually a temporary loss. After a few weeks, the intestines heal and the lactase start to flow again.

Is there anything a parent can do to help? Probiotics are one suggestion.

Are probiotics for every child? is an article on the Health.com site. It discusses a study done in South Africa:

Diarrhoea is one of South Africa’s biggest causes of death among children under the age of five. Unable to replace fluids, babies become weak and dehydrated, and the results are tragic.

It is in terms of prevention and treatment (in conjunction with oral rehydration solution) of babies with diarrhoea that probiotics work their magic most startlingly.

In one study, children aged between six and 36 months, who were hospitalised with diarrhoea, were split into two groups. One group received a probiotic called Lactobacillus reuteri and the other a placebo. Both groups also took an oral rehydration solution, essential for anyone with diarrhoea.

By the second day, the recovery rate of the probiotic group was remarkable compared to the control group.

Even when a baby has recovered from acute diarrhoea, like rotavirus diarrhoea, there is sometimes invisible damage to the digestive tract. This can cause problems with the digestion of the milk protein lactose, even if the baby tolerated milk-based formula with no problem previously.

Ongoing treatment with probiotics can help to break down the milk sugar, improving the baby’s lactose tolerance. The colonies of good bacteria will re-establish and provide the natural digestive assistance needed.

What to look for in a probiotic?

Look for one that is a human strain, clearly identified with a registration number from an international culture bank such as the American Type Culture Collection (e.g. ATTC 55730). Human-strain probiotics originate from breast milk or from the intestine itself. They are then grown in fermenters to produce enough for large scale production.

Good probiotics will have passed safety tests and have good, proven shelf life. With the pharmacist’s help, you should choose a probiotic that can survive in the acidic environment of the stomach as it passes through on its way to the intestine. An effective probiotic will deliver 100 million cfu of good bacteria.

And here's a warning:

An independent study published in the South African Medical Journal a few years ago drew attention to the fact that not all probiotics are equal and that even if you read the label you can’t be sure you’re getting what you’re promised. Other similar international studies had shown that few products really contained what the label claimed.

And one giant grain of salt: the information is being provided by Thebe Pharmaceuticals. However, I don't see anything here that is incorrect or excessively biased. Probiotics are not a cure-all, but they may be useful in reducing symptoms.

FAAN Launches Teen Allergy Awareness Site

I told you a couple of days ago that this is Food Allergy Awareness Week.

Buried down in the bottom of the press release from FAAN (the Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network) is a mention of www.fanteen.org. That turns out to be a new web site that was just launched on May 1.

Here comes another press release:

The Web site, “Food Allergies in the Real World,” is designed to provide all teens with practical strategies for handling food allergies in social situations such as prom, dating, and going off to college. A study of 32 cases of fatal food-allergic reactions showed that more than half of the victims were kids aged 10 to 19. Interviews with family and friends indicated that the child did not expect to have a reaction, and that their friends were often unaware of the food allergy or didn’t know how to help once a reaction began. A recent study of teen behavior indicates that teens feel educating their friends would make their lives easier, yet they don’t want to be the ones doing the educating. “Our goal with this Web site is to give teens — tomorrow’s leaders —a place to go for information about how to manage food allergies, while living life to the fullest,” said Anne Muñoz-Furlong, FAAN founder and CEO.

FAAN’s teen Web site offers “real world” strategies and provides a network of teens facing the same struggles and feelings in their everyday interactions with school administrators, classmates, neighbors, friends, and family. The “Personal Stories” section presents actual experiences of teens and college students with food allergies, and recollections from their friends. The “Advice” section offers practical answers to tough questions from young adults who’ve lived through the same situations. New interactive features such as polling questions, a “Talk Back” feature in which users can share their thoughts, and a food allergy calculator that, based on national statistics, shows how many students may have food allergies in a school and reminds teens that they are not alone in their everyday struggles with food allergy.

“Food Allergies in the Real World” was crafted with insight from members of FAAN’s Teen Advisory Group comprised of 20 nationwide adolescents and young adults who have food allergies. Food-allergic teens live with a burden of responsibility that most adolescents never face. Because there is no cure for food allergy, these teenagers can never let their guard down and must rely on strict avoidance of allergy-causing foods, ongoing vigilance detecting common ingredients in unexpected places, and consistency in never leaving home without their life-saving medication, epinephrine (EpiPen® or Twinject™). Until there is a cure for food allergy, education is the key to avoiding a reaction. FAAN’s teen Web site will help these young adults to be prepared, in all situations, and avoid tragic results.

While milk or dairy allergies are seldom anaphylactic, the possibility exists. If you're a parent, encourage your teen to check out the site. It's even interactive. Under a Watch Out banner is this paragraph:

Keep in mind that products labeled as "non-dairy" are not always milk-free. Such products often contain casein, a milk protein. Remember, there is no shortcut to label reading. Taking a few minutes to check ingredients is better than spending time treating an allergic reaction!

And then you can send in a tip.

Send in one here too!

Lactaid's Milk Moments Campaign

This is the week to be a proud member of the army of people who are lactose intolerant or dairy allergic, I guess.

Not only is this Food Allergy Awareness Week, but LACTAID is kicking off the LACTAID MILK MOMENTS campaign.

The LACTAID® MILK MOMENTS™ consumer campaign kicks-off nationally on May 15th with a coast-to-coast children’s art contest called “Searching for LACTAID® MILK MOMENTS™.” The contest asks kids ages 11 and under to illustrate their favorite LACTAID® MILK MOMENTS™, such as having a milk and cookies treat with mom or drinking a smoothie, for the chance to win prizes worth $10,000 in value.

Three first place winners will receive a:
•Full kitchen makeover for the family that includes tableware, small appliances, refrigerator and more

•Deluxe “art studio” that includes art supplies, a digital camera and a computer

•The opportunity to see their winning artwork on LACTAID® Milk carton panels starting in October

•Second and third place winners will also be selected to receive the deluxe art studio.

A new website has been launched and consumers can visit the bilingual website WWW.LACTAIDMILKMOMENTS.COM for contest rules and more information. The deadline for entries is June 30, 2006.

Spreading the News of the Importance of Art Education

In launching LACTAID® MILK MOMENTS™ and the children’s art contest, the LACTAID® Brand is partnering with PTO Today, Inc. (PTO), a leading organization that provides expertise and support for school parent group leaders across the country.

The brand is making a $50,000 donation to the organization in support of art education in schools. More than 30 schools in select cities will receive art supplies in the Fall to host a Family Arts & Craft Night, a PTO program that enriches students’ lives with a fun and educational evening of art making.

Lactaid itself can be found at its website, www.lactaid.com.

May 14-20, is Food Allergy Awareness Week

This week, May 14-20, is Food Allergy Awareness Week. Don't check your calendars. FAAN - The Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network – proclaimed it themselves.

"The 2006 Food Allergy Awareness Week campaign kicks off on Mother's Day, such an appropriate day to salute the millions of mothers of children with food allergy who do so much to educate others in order to keep their children safe," said Anne Munoz-Furlong, CEO and Founder of FAAN. "The new labeling law marks a new beginning as we continue to increase awareness about this growing public health concern within our communities and ask ourselves to help keep children safe."

This past fall, The Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Management Act of 2005 (HR 4063) was introduced requesting the federal government to create food allergy management guidelines for schools nationwide. FAAN's primary goal is for school staff across the country to have the tools they need to develop a plan for keeping food-allergic students safe.

According to Munoz-Furlong, "Scientists around the world are investigating food allergy to determine why some people become allergic, how to stop the reactions and how to cure the disease. We are hopeful that in the next ten years or so, there will be significant breakthroughs -- until then, education is key."

...

Founded in 1991, The Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network (FAAN) is the world leader in food allergy information. FAAN, a nonprofit organization based in Fairfax, VA, is dedicated to increasing public awareness about food allergy and anaphylaxis, to providing education, and to advancing research on behalf of all those affected by food allergies. The organization has just under 30,000 members in the United States, Canada, and 62 other countries.

FAAN provides information about food allergy and educational resources to patients, their families, schools, health professionals, pharmaceutical companies, the food industry, and government officials. Educational materials published by FAAN are reviewed for medical accuracy by the FAAN Medical Advisory Board, which is comprised of 14 of the world's leaders in food allergy science and medicine. In addition to printed materials, FAAN also sponsors awareness programs such as Food Allergy Awareness Week, Food Allergy Conferences, and the Mariel C. Furlong Awards for Making a Difference as well as fundraising walks across the country. Educational materials and information about special programs are also available online at www.foodallergy.org, www.fankids.org, and www.faanteen.org.

Enough press release talk. FAAN is a good organization. Check out their websites.

Vegetarian Express

Laurie Snyman sent me an email touting her "pre-packaged vegan foods and spices that are quick and easy to make" site, www.thevegetarianexpress.com. [Spices that are quick and easy to make? The Internet will be the death of parallelism in English sentence construction. Sigh.]

To be honest, there aren't that many products there, and only one is of real interest to those of us who have lactose intolerance or milk allergies. That's their Parma Zaan Sprinkles cheese substitute.

There are a number of articles and recipes on the site, however, and those might be useful to those who are first looking to go vegetarian and cut dairy out of their diets.

It looks as if the site is still in the process of pulling itself together. Here's hoping that they do more with it.

First Gluten (and Lactose) Free Restaurant Opens

So many firsts. Hope some of them last.

Back in March I told you about the first gluten free store to open. Now comes news about the first gluten free restaurant in North America.

Splitt isn't exactly convenient, unless you live in southwest Calgary, Alberta, Canada. And it took a lot of work just to get it open.

It has taken six months and consultation with the Canadian Celiac Association for Splitt to craft a menu that they say won't make celiacs sick.

"It's been quite challenging actually," says chef Steaphen Cleary. "There aren't a lot of products out there."

Splitt, so named because it's a restaurant during the day and a nightclub in the evening, offers everything from egg breakfasts to steak dinners. Its menu notes that all items are gluten and lactose free, with the exception of beverages, although it also offers gluten-free alcohol -- such as certain liquors and wines. Bread products are also available without gluten.

Pasta and wheat bread, for example, are no-nos for celiac sufferers. So Splitt created a Mexican lasagna that uses soft corn tortillas in place of pasta layers and offers a rice bun with its jalapeno stuffed burger.

Will it last? Who knows? The percentage of people thought to be gluten intolerant is growing but is still considered to be no more than 1% of the population, hardly enough to sustain a restaurant. Those of us with lactose intolerance are a larger percentage, though, and since most people with gluten intolerance are also LI we may be enough to make the difference.

More speciality stores; more specialty restaurants. Good signs for the future.

Digestive Advantage

I received an email from Gerti Sonderquist of Digestive Advantage with updated information about their product. I've made the changes to all the page on my web site, so it's a good time to mention them here as well.

Digestive Advantage is one of a couple of products with a different approach to combating the symptoms of lactose intolerance (LI). They all take advantage, pun intended, of the fact that LI symptoms have two causes. First, undigested lactose will pull water out into the intestines and create diarrhea. Second, undigested lactose may be fermented by bacteria that naturally live in the colon, creating gas and bloating.

Different people may get symptoms from one or both of these causes, depending on any number of factors. Lactase taken with food should help most everybody, but it's a good idea to also change the bacteria to the type of bacteria that digests lactose rather than ferments it.

Digestive Advantage does have lactase in it, but since you take it only once a day, I don't consider that a help. Lactase needs to be taken with food that contains dairy. (See When to Take Your Lactase.)

More important, from my perspective, it contains a "patented, proprietary Lactobacillus culture." Once this culture colonizes – takes over – your colon, your symptoms should improve.

I've received a large number of emails from readers who tell me that Digestive Advantage really works as advertised.

"I tried Digestive Advantage yesterday, and it worked great. I waited until Saturday so I could be at home for this experiment (I'm sure you understand why). I took two caplets in the morning, then had cheese, milk chocolate, and pizza with extra cheese throughout the day. I kept waiting to get violently ill, but I was fine all day yesterday and today. By the way, I am SEVERELY lactose intolerant---even a little bit of whey in a cookie and I am sick for hours. Hope this helps."

"I have been using Digestive Advantage for a little over a year and I love it. I take one pill a day and can now eat many things that I could not before. I still avoid high lactose foods, but can now eat things like pizza without discomfort."

"I've been taking this product for about a month and a half. It works great! I'm in sales and marking and have to take clients to lunch and dinner quite often. I was always fearful of eating out, especially with clients as diarrhea would start just about immediately after eating. I travel extensively as well and being on an airplane was nerve racking! This product is the only thing I have found that gives me confidence and relief of my symptoms. I can live my life again!"

I cannot guarantee that Digestive Advantage will work this well – or at all – for everybody. If you would like to try it, Gerti reminded me that:

we give out free 8 day samples for anyone who is interested by calling toll free 800.456.0276 or going to our website – www.ganedenbiotech.com

Other contact info:
Ganeden Biotech, Inc.
5915 Landerbrook Drive, Suite 304
Mayfield Heights, OH 44124

440-229-5200 Main Phone
440-229-5240 Fax

email: info@ganedenbiotech.com

Ganendan also makes a line of other digestive lactobacillus products. And it's now appearing in supermarkets in the digestive aids or laxatives section of supermarkets. A full page of coupons appeared in my local paper recently. You can also find them on Internet shopping sites if they're not in your local stores.

Let me know how they work for you.

When to Take Your Lactase

Back to lactose intolerance basics. Here's a question that I got an email about.

When should I take my lactase pills?

The best time to take your lactase is just before you start eating. The lactase is designed to go quickly through the stomach and enter the small intestine. That's where it works. If you take the pill before eating any of the dairy, the lactase will be sitting there waiting for it.

Should I take another pill if I have more dairy during the meal?

Food moves the intestines slowly. In fact, your system requires hours to break down and digest all the nutrients in food. If you take enough lactase at the beginning of a meal it will all still be there for any food eaten during the course of a meal.

If you're surprised by dairy you didn't expect, say by a big dairy-laden dessert, then go ahead and take more lactase. But otherwise it's not necessary.

What if I forget and don't take the lactase until the end of the meal or even later?

You want the lactase to be there first. If the lactase chases the lactose it may not catch up with the first part of the meal and some lactose can slip through undigested.

Even so, better to miss some lactose than to miss all of it. If you have lactase, take it. It should still do some good by reducing symptoms even if it doesn't eliminate them completely.

Take Calcium. Every Day. Forever.

Here's the short version: Take calcium. Take calcium daily. Take calcium daily forever.

Now the long version.

Two long-term major studies of calcium use by women have appeared lately. One was an Australian study of 1,460 women older than 70, reported in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine. The other was a finding from the Women's Health Initiative (WHI), that major ongoing study of 36,000 postmenopausal women that has spawned so many articles and controversy over so many of its findings.

And the superficial, quick read version of both these studies is that calcium does nothing. No statistically significant benefits found.

This is true, and yet it is dead wrong. The superficial read is the wrong read. The headlines will steer you false yet again.

Dig deeper. Take a look at "Protecting Your Bones: New Evidence Helps Clarify the Benefits of Calcium," Tara Parker-Pope's Health Journal column in the April 25, 2006 Wall Street Journal. (Available online only to WSJ subscribers. Sorry.)

The real story is buried in the data, but it's a blockbuster. The reason the Australian study found no benefits is that 43% of the women in it stopped taking their calcium during the five year study. The women who kept taking the pills had a massive 34% reduction in their overall risk of a fracture.

About the same fraction of women stopped taking the calcium in the WHI study. And many of the women in the study were under 60, making them less likely to suffer fractures in the first place. Women over 60 were 21% less likely to suffer a hip fracture. Women who took the pills regularly had a 29% lower risk. When everyone was counted in, those who weren't taking calcium supplements before the study now had a 30% lower risk.

"It was a bit of a surprise and a bit disappointing to discover that the effect was so dependent on compliance," says [Australian] study author Richard L. Prince, associate professor at the School of Medicine and Pharmacology at the University of Western Australia. Patients need to make their calcium regimen a life-long habit "to get the full treatment effect."

As with every medication, side effects occur. The WHI study found that daily calcium may increase the, low, risk of kidney stones by 17%. However, the only side effect the Australian study spotted was constipation.

So take calcium now. Take it later. Take it daily. How much? 1200 mg is what the studies recommend.

And never get medical news just from headlines.

Molecules of Lactose - the Teeny Tiny Truth

Let's take a nostalgic stroll back to high school chemistry. Yeah, I'm getting all misty eyed too. But if you ever learned the concept of gram molecular weight and Avogadro's Number, that's where it first came up. (If not, you're special and you don't need to read this but you already know the answer.)

Avogadro's number is 6.022∙10²³. That's a really really really huge number. Written out in full it reads: 602,200,000,000,000,000,000,000. The number is important because that's how many molecules exist in a mole of any substance. A "mole" is short for gram molecular weight.

The molecular weight of a molecule is the weight of N₀ such molecules. The molecular weight of a molecule is equal to the sum of the atomic weights of its constituting atoms.

So what's the molecular weight of lactose? (Aha. This suddenly gets relevant.) Lactose's chemical formula is C₁₂H₂₂O₁₁. I'll do the math for you. A mole of lactose molecules weights about 342 grams.

Now one gram is a tiny amount. There are 454 grams in a pound, 28.375 grams in an ounce. An eight ounce glass of milk has 12 grams of lactose. If you held an ounce of lactose in your hand, you couldn't even feel that it was there. Yet that one gram still contains 1,760,233,918,128,654,970,766 molecules of lactose. Rounded, that's 1.76•10²¹ molecules. (6.022∙10²³ / 342)

That's why I tell people with lactose intolerance not to get worried about a few molecules of lactose. Or even a few billion. A few molecules can't hurt you. Your system wouldn't even recognize them.

Those with dairy protein allergies need to be a bit more careful, but similar math applies. Proteins are far heavier than lactose. They can weight a million times more. And even nanograms of protein can set off a reaction. A nanogram is one billionth of a gram. Even a million billion is small next to Avogardo's number, though. If you divide 1.76•10²¹ by a million billion, you're still left with 1.76•10⁶ or 1,760,000. Almost two million protein molecules are needed at the very least to set out a reaction in the most sensitive person. The real minimum is probably larger than this.

Caution is definitely the byword for those who are anaphylactic to milk. For the rest of us, just remember a few molecules are the same as none at all.

Lactose Helps Explain Evolution

All of us with lactose intolerance should know that some of the bacteria in our colons manufacture the lactase enzyme, which helps digest any lactose that reaches them, reducing symptoms.

Few of us realize that learning how the bacteria do this was one of the breakthroughs in understanding how genes function.

The new issue of the New York Review of Books has a review by Edward Ziff and Israel Rosenfield of three new books on evolution. As usual, the review is an actual review of the subject as much as or more than a critical review of the book's involved. The authors explain the lactose collection as follows:

The number of genes in a given species, therefore, is not a measure of its complexity. Why had biologists so overestimated the number of genes in the human genome? Why is it unnecessary for complex animals such as mammals to have ten times as many genes as worms?

The answers to these questions were already hinted at more than four decades ago. At the time it was known that the bacteria E. coli, which normally live off the sugar glucose, are also capable of producing enzymes that digest other sugars, such as lactose. But biologists noticed that the bacteria only produce the enzyme when lactose is present in their immediate environment. Scientists could not explain how the E. coli somehow "knew" when the lactose-digesting enzyme would be needed.

In 1961, Jacques Monod and François Jacob discovered that E. coli bacteria actually have a mechanism that controls the production of the enzyme for digesting lactose. As unicellular organisms, E. coli bacteria have only several thousand genes, each of which is made up of a specific sequence of DNA. A single one of these genes, present in all E. coli, carries in its DNA the genetic instructions needed to assemble the enzyme that can digest lactose; the DNA is copied into RNA, which is then "translated" to produce the enzyme itself. When there is no lactose present in the bacteria's immediate environment, the gene is switched off: its DNA is not copied into RNA and the enzyme is not produced. The reason for this, the scientists discovered, is that a protein called a repressor molecule attaches itself to the DNA site where the copying into RNA begins, thus blocking off the DNA and preventing the gene from producing the RNA responsible for the synthesis of the enzyme.

On the other hand, when the E. coli bacteria encounter lactose, the lactose binds itself to this repressor molecule, causing the repressor to be detached from the DNA site. This unblocks the DNA, allowing the gene to be copied into RNA, and produce the enzyme that can digest lactose. In other words, the repressor molecule acts as a switch that controls the gene's production of the enzyme. Since only a fraction of the total number of genes present in an organism are expressed, or turned on, at any given time, Monod and Jacob conjectured that other genes must be similarly turned on and off.

Although they had not yet found systematic evidence to support these ideas, the discovery of the repressor molecule allowed the two scientists to form a powerful new hypothesis about how genes function. As Jacob recently wrote, in a brief description of the new hypothesis:

It proposed a model to explain one of the oldest problems in biology: in organisms made up of millions, even billions of cells, every cell possesses a complete set of genes; how, then, is it that all the genes do not function in the same way in all tissues? That the nerve cells do not use the same genes as the muscle cells or the liver cells? In short, [we] presented a new view of the genetic landscape.

The deeper significance of the Monod-Jacob model of gene function, and its implications for the nature of evolution, became apparent with the new field of embryo research that arose almost twenty years later.

There's much more to the article. Read it for a better understanding of the evolution of evolution.

Go GoDairyFree.com

Alisa Fleming of GoDairyFree.com - "The Complete Resource for Dairy Free Living" – sent me an email alerting me to her site.

I got these on a regular basis, and most fail on almost all counts. Too limited, poor information, bad design, not up-to-date.

None of these apply to GoDairyFree.com. It takes a lot to impress me, but I'm impressed.

GoDairyFree.com is divided into a number of sections,

What's New?

• Monthly Newsletter
  
• Online Retailers for Hard to Find Products
  
• The Recipe & Discussion Forum
  
• Dairy Free Product Lists

Dairy Free . . .


• . . . At the Grocery Store
  
• . . . In the Kitchen
  
• . . . When Dining Out
  
• . . . In the News

Topics of Interest


• All About Milk
  
• Calcium
  
• Key Issues
  
• Medical Conditions Linked to Milk
  
• FAQs

Additional Resources
The 10-day Dairy Free Challenge

Each section has several long articles inside of it.

Most impressive is the Dairy Free Foods & Products page. This lists 2500 dairy-free products with information and a link for each. It's similar to my Priduct Clearinghouse except that I limit my info to direct substitutes for dairy products, while GoDairyFree.com includes hundreds of the various foods that are dairy-free. The additional information should be valuable. I just hope they have a staff of a thousand to be it updated!

There's also a forum to share tips and ask questions.

A newsletter is coming in May. So are many other tempting items.

Real work went into this site. I feel better about not having the time or energy to keep my website going at top speed. The field of products for those with lactose intolerance or dairy allergies or vegans or all the others who want to avoid dairy has gotten just too huge for any one person to cover it as a part-timer. I really do hope that they have the staff to keep this going. I know just how hard that is.

Best of luck!

More UK Free-From Foods Honoured

Good to hear that the UK is finally catching up with the States in foods that are milk and wheat-free.

Checkout Magazine reported on the latest to win honours for their foods.

Two companies in the food sector have been awarded Queen’s Awards for Enterprise.

Cumbrian family bakery, Bells of Lazonby, has won the Queen’s Award in the Innovation category for its gluten, wheat and dairy-free products produced under the Ok and Village bakery brands.

Bells’ innovation has centred on the production of its allergy-friendly bakery products. The company’s aim was to provide great tasting rather than clinical products, which would have a wide appeal in the growing health and diets food markets. The products were launched at IFE in 2003 and are now listed by Asda, Booths, Boots, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s and Tesco. Bells’ sales have grown to £2.5m and its workforce has expanded to 30 from nothing two and half years ago.

I remember when just finding a single lactose-free milk product was an issue.

For more on UK products for those with lactose intolerance or milk allergies, also check my UK News page.

Non-Dairy "Milks"

Here's another interesting site I link to on my LI Links page.

The Cook's Thesaurus site has a Non-dairy Milks & Creams page that defines a variety of liquid milk substitutes from almond "milk" to soy "milk".

Both those who have lactose intolerance or a dairy allergy need these substitutes, at least at times. Here's info that can help you decide what to buy. And there are also recipes for making these "milks" yourself to your own taste.

Sheep's Milk - Less Lactose?

Slim Ewe is not a user id on MySpace, a curseword on the Sopranos, or the winner of Nashville Idol. It's the latest fad form of dairy, ice cream made from whole sheep's milk.

Nutraingredients.com featured Jess Halliday's article, The healthy potential of sheep’s milk, on David Baker, owner of Styles Farm in the sourthwest of England, who's been making ice cream from sheep's milk for the past 18 years.

So why is this of interest to us? Because of the usual nutty claim.

According to market analyst Mintel, non-cow milks (sheep and goat) currently have a 0.8 per cent share of the white milk market value. The market is growing – but not so much because of the healthy profile (indeed the higher fat content of the milk is a drawback) but because of lower lactose content than cow's milk, making it more suitable for people with a perceived intolerance.

Of course, the article provides nothing to back up the claim that non-cow milks have a lower lactose content than cow's milk. If you want facts about milk, the first place to look is, that's right, my web site. My Lactose Zoo page gives average lactose content for over 30 animal milks.

Cow 3.7-5.1%



Goat 4.1-4.7%



Sheep 4.6-5.4%

Even if you assume – correctly – that most cow's milk is at the higher end of the scale and sheep's milk is at the lower end, the difference is a few tenths of a percentage point at most. Not enough to make any noticeable difference in anyone's symptoms.

Your ability to have Slim Ewe will be almost exactly that of your ability to have cow's milk ice cream. You shouldn't feel any difference in lactose content.

But the claims just keep on comin'.

Allergy Warning - Don't Chew Your Clothing!

From the life gets weirder every day department:

According to an article on the online version of the Canadian magazine Macleans, clothing is now being made from "100 per cent dehydrated spun cows' milk fibre."

That means that people who chew or drool on their clothing, like infants or your Uncle Fred, can release the milk proteins involved.

Researchers in the Food Allergy Research and Resource Program at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln found that milk allergens can easily be extracted from clothes made from the fibre, and in concentrations sufficient to pose a hazard to people with milk allergies….

Dry milk fibres may also pose a risk to people with a milk allergy if the fibres are inhaled or come into contact with the skin.

How do you know if you have clothing made from dehydrated milk? Beats me. I always tell people to read the ingredients list on every product they buy, but I didn't know that also meant their pants.

More Lactase, Please

Press releases lie. That's not really a condemnation of them. It's their job description. No matter what the product is or what it does, the press release will make it sound far more wonderful, perfect, effective, and useful than it can possibly be. Smart consumers have learned to go beyond the press release and dig up the real facts.

You want an example? Naturally, I have one handy. It's from National Enzyme Company announcing their new BioCor^e™ line of digestive enzymes. Yes, the whole product line really has that crazy, er, nifty raised, italicized ^e as part of its name.

And naturally, there's a dairy supplement that's part of the line:

BioCor^e Dairy™ is a potent formula comprised of lactase and protease designed to alleviate symptoms associated with dairy intolerance. BioCor^e Dairy Ultra™ is an enhanced dairy formulation targeting milk fat in addition to dairy intolerance.

I have a page in my Product Clearinghouse for Lactase Pills. That page has all the name brand lactase pills available in the U.S. that I know of that meet my standards. The biggest and pretty much only standard that you need to worry about is whether a pill has enough lactase in it to do the job of relieving symptoms due to lactose intolerance. Since you can take more than one pill at a time, I set that standard fairly low at 1500 FCC units. (That can also be expressed as 1500 Lac U. or 1500 ALU or 100 mg.)

What you don't see on that page are many pills that contain other digestive enzymes. That's because there is not the slightest scientific evidence that other digestive enzymes make any difference at all in controlling symptoms from lactose. Only lactase counts. If you have enough lactase, then the digestive enzymes added are meaningless, although probably harmless. If you don't have enough lactase, then all the other digestive enzymes won't do a thing.

So what about BioCor^e Dairy™ and BioCor^e Dairy Ultra™? Some digging at the National Enzyme website shows that they contain 1000 ALU. Not enough to make them effective, and not enough to make them cost effective since you would need to take several at a time to feel any relief. I won't be adding those pills to my website.

Sorry, National Enzyme. But I know not to believe the wonders promised by press releases. I hope you readers now do as well.

The Lactase Gene: A Precursor to Cultural Evolution?

All mammals produce milk to feed their young, and virtually all mammals use the sugar lactose, found nowhere else on earth, as an energy source for that milk. The young manufacture the enzyme called lactase, which split the lactose into simpler sugars, which can be absorbed by the intestines and used by the body. And all mammals lose their lactase-making ability at about the normal age of weaning, when it presumably would never be needed again.

Humans are mammals, and for most of our existence we functioned just like all the others. Humans naturally stop making lactase at about three years of age, and are lactose intolerant after that.

Except that a few had a mutation to a single gene. This mutation never sent out the signal to stop making the lactase. It was what is called a "neutral" mutation. For most of human history nobody ever saw the effects of this mutation, because no adult human ever drank milk.

But sometime around 10,000 years ago or so, humans started domesticating animals that were milkable. And at some point after that, they started regularly collecting the milk and using it, either to feed motherless children, or to process it into yogurt, kumiss, kefir, and other milk products.

The people who could manufacture lactase as adults suffered from fewer symptoms when they had these dairy products, and were also better able to use the nutrients in the milk. They prospered and spread their mutated genes through the local population. Since these people happened to be the ancestors of today's Europeans, these genes also got spread throughout the entire world, making adult milk-drinking common almost everywhere.

That's the standard story of lactose tolerance. What's new is that some scientists are postulating that the story of this one mutated gene may be something that's been duplicated with other genes without our being aware of it.

A story online from Wired magazine, "Getting Evolution Up to Speed," by Annalee Newitz talks about these notions, especially a study that demonstrates that two key genes connected to brain size are currently under rapid selection in populations throughout the globe. Newitz cites University of Chicago geneticist Bruce Lahn when she writes:

Chicago geneticist Lahn is most intrigued by the possibility that cultural factors are involved in brain evolution. "We think some of these new gene variants may be as young as a few thousand years, a period when human culture was changing dramatically," he said. "Maybe these genes are selected not for hunting but because of organized society." He cautioned that this is just a hypothesis, but "recent cultural evolution and biological evolution may be linked."

Jonathan Pritchard, an evolutionary biologist also at the University of Chicago, has also been looking at the lactase gene in these terms:

"The time scale for a strongly favored mutation to sweep through a population is about 5,000 years," [Pritchard said]. "It's hard to get an exact estimate for rates of change, but we know that the lactase gene is evolving the fastest in humans. It was new 5,000 years ago and now it's in virtually everybody in Europe."

The lactase gene is what allows humans to metabolize dairy products as adults. It's widely believed to have evolved in response to humans' domestication of dairy animals -- individuals who could enhance their diet with dairy products had such a strong survival advantage that the gene spread at the speed of, well, several thousand generations.

A storm of publicity greeted Pritchard's recent paper on signals of selection across the human genome. The response came in large part because Pritchard and his colleagues had found such overwhelming evidence that many human genes are evolving: not just ones that govern the brain, but also ones associated with reproduction, disease resistance and the ability to process certain kinds of foods.

"I think my work is changing people's ideas about evolution, because now natural selection seems to have continued all the way up to the present day," said Pritchard. "There's no reason to think it stops now."

Many other scientists are arguing that human changes to health, medicine, and the environment are overwhelming these natural evolutionary changes, which is why Pritchard and Lahn's notions are so controversial.

Both pathways might come into play in the future.

Lahn is comfortable with this idea. "If there's an evolutionary advantage to be had by using technology, then people will do it," he said. "People are going to start changing the game in evolution in ways Darwin never anticipated."

"Free From" Foods Grow in Sales

Sales of so-called "free from" foods are soaring in Britain and elsewhere in the world, matching the huge rise in sales of these products in the U.S. They've gone up an estimated 329% over the past five years creating a market worth £90 million in 2005. Meanwhile, dairy-free products are valued at £32 million, with sales of products such as soya milk and yoghurts growing by 28% over the same 3 year period.

Why? Blame (or credit) celebritites. Orlando Bloom and ex-Spice Girl Victoria Beckham have to stay away from dairy products, say sources close to them (or tabloids or somebody equally respectable). Another ex-Spice, Geri Halliwell, and actress Rachel Weisz can't have wheat. (see http://www.nutritionpoint.co.uk/ for a UK-based gluten-free site.

There's an ongoing argument over whether these stars have raised awareness about a real problem ignored in the past or are merely creating false self-diagnoses by celebrity followers. Lactose intolerance is easy to misdiagnose, since so many foods create the same intestinal symptoms.

Life Style Extra quotes a Dairy Mail article concerning a report by the market research group Mintel:

One of the interesting characteristics of the market is the high level of "misdiagnosis", which stems from the public's willingness to self-diagnose at best or simply avoid a particular product based on little more than one bad experience, a news article or peer and family advice, says the report.

And consumer analyst Julie Sloan has much more to say:

The popularity of soya milk under high profile brands has certainly played its part in catapulting the free-from food sector into the mainstream away from the specialist dietary food field.

"The explosion of new product launches in the free-from market as a whole, as well as greater dedicated shelf space, have also had a significant role in the market's growth.

"High-profile cases of life-threatening allergies to products such as nuts have undoubtedly brought the problem of allergies and food intolerance into the limelight as well.

The "free from" market is expected to double in the UK between 2005 and 2010.

And elsewhere. An article by Lindsey Ord in the South African newspaper The Daily News has the following quote:

And South African dietetics experts predict that we're heading for a boom in "free from" foods here, too.

Dudu Mthuli, chairwoman of the KZN branch of Adsa, the Association for Dietetics in South Africa, says that "free from" foods are not as readily available in South Africa as in most first world countries, but she foresees an increase in their sales because of increased awareness and self-diagnosis.

But she adds a word of caution: "Omitting foods without proper supervision is not recommended and can compromise your health.

"It is important to consult your doctor who can determine if you are indeed suffering a food allergy, or whether it might be some other cause of your symptoms.

"Only after proper diagnosis should there be long-term dietary changes - and this should be under the supervision of a registered dietitian, who will be able to advise on a balanced diet by ensuring proper nutrient intake to maintain your health, while taking your diagnosis into consideration.

"Free from foods are usually much more expensive and sometimes not so well suited to our tastebuds and therefore should not be encouraged unless a proper diagnosis has been made."

If you truly have an intolerance or food allergy, this is all great news. If you just think you do, make sure you get checked by a reputable medical doctor (not a homeopath or chiropractor) before making this drastic a change in your diet.