Lactose Is Not High Fructose Corn Syrup

I found an odd comment through Google News but was frustrated when I clicked on the link. Apparently you can only view broadcasts from the Christian Broadcasting Network if you are a logged-in member, yet the comments on the programs are completely open to all. It took me some hunting before I accidentally changed onto the article itself.

But the comments are not on cbn.com, but on my.cbn.com. This comment page is on the program and article, "Are You Being Processed to Death?" I can't find a way to get from one to the other.

The article has some standard rants against high fructose corn syrup.

Former FDA toxicologist Dr. Dana Flavin says while sugar is burned and turned into energy, high fructose corn syrup turns into fat, causing what's known as "fatty liver." She says sugar can make you feel full, but high fructose corn syrup does not trigger the body's satisfaction gauge, so you always desire more. ...

Also on the list are other syrups and sweeteners like dextrose, glucose, lactose and maltose.

What is the body's satisfaction gauge? I can't tell you. A Google search indicates that only this article and the comments on it use the phrase.

But that is the problem. One of the comments contains this paragraph.

The different names for "high fructose corn syrup" are "dextrose, glucose, lactose, maltose." These turn into fat (causing "fatty liver") and do not trigger the body's satisfaction gauge.

Not a single word of that paragraph is correct. High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is not the equivalent of dextrose or glucose or lactose or maltose. No such labeling is allowed in the U.S. Nor do any of these sugars turn into fat any more than any other excess calories taken in the body might eventually be stored as fat. Although some preliminary studies with rats showed that diets contained as much HFCS as they wanted to eat could cause fatty liver disease, these studies have not been carried out with humans. The studies that recently made the papers was one which took people who already had fatty liver disease and showed that those who ate foods with fructose might end up with liver scarring. An article at msn.com said that its not clear if the sweetener directly caused the scarring. And the study used fructose found in many foods, including healthy diet food like fruits. HFCS was only a small part of the overall study.

Basically, the article was overly broad, the comment scientifically illiterate. Yet the fear they produce will go much farther than the qualified findings of a proper medical study. Such is the way of the internet.

Not All Sugars Are Created Equal

Lactose is the sugar found in milk and essentially nowhere else in the world. (There are a few reports of traces being found in various plants, but it's not clear whether those can be confirmed.) There are about 12 grams of lactose in a cup, eight ounces, of milk. That's one reason why nutritionists favor milk over sodas. An equivalently-sized glass of Coke has 27 grams of sugar.

But what kind of sugar is sugar? In the United States the word "sugar" on an ingredients list means sucrose, the sugar that is found in sugar cane or sugar beets. Any other sweetener must be individually named.

What's in these sweeteners? The new January-February 2010 issue of the Nutrition Action Healthletter (so new that the website hasn't been updated to mention it yet: what's wrong with people who can't get their websites up to date?) has an interesting sidebar to its cover article on "Sugar Overload." It tells you what's in sugars. It may not be what you expect.

Lactose is a disaccharide, meaning it is made up of two simple sugars, glucose and galactose. Sugar is an example of a carbohydrate and all carbohydrates eventually break down in the body to form glucose, which is the body's energy source. Glucose is already there. Galactose breaks down in about 45 minutes. Complex carbohydrates, like the starches, are usually just long chains of glucose molecules. That's why all carbohydrates provide 4 calories of energy per gram.

Sucrose is also a disaccharide, made up of fructose and glucose. It's a chemical combination of the two, just as lactose is a chemical combination of galactose and glucose. Fructose metabolism is somewhat more complex than galactose metabolism, one reason that it is controversial as a sweetener. The big difference between sucrose and high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), though, is that sucrose is a chemical combination of glucose and fructose and HFCS is a physical combination of the two. There are several commercial mixtures of glucose and fructose that are sold as HFCS but the version that is 58% glucose and 42% fructose has the same sweetness as sucrose, which is why it's used as a substitute.

So what is the effect of HFCS? That same page I linked to above says there isn't one.

Studies that have compared high fructose corn syrup (an ingredient in nearly all soft drinks sold in the US) to sucrose (common table sugar) find that most measured physiological effects are equivalent. For instance, Melanson et al. (2006), studied the effects of HFCS and sucrose sweetened drinks on blood glucose, insulin, leptin, and ghrelin levels. They found no significant differences in any of these parameters.[48] This is not surprising since sucrose is a disaccharide which digests to 50% fructose and 50% glucose; while the high fructose corn syrup most commonly used on soft drinks is 55% fructose and 45% glucose. The difference between the two lies in the fact that HFCS contains little sucrose, the fructose and glucose being independent moieties.

48. Melanson, K.; et al. (2006). "Eating Rate and Satiation.". Obesity Society (NAASO) 2006 Annual Meeting, October 20-24,Hynes Convention Center, Boston, Massachusetts. doi:10.1111/1467-9280.02452 (inactive 2008-06-25).

Let the furious comments begin.

What about other sugars? Let's circle back to that Nutrition Action Healthletter article.

Agave syrup or nectar: 84% fructose, 8% glucose, 8% sucrose.
Apple juice concentrate: 60% fructose, 27% glucose, 13% sucrose.
Brown sugar: 97% sucrose, 1% fructose, 1% glucose.
Evaporated cane juice: 100% sucrose.
Dextrose: 100% glucose.
Grape juice concentrate: 52% fructose, 48% glucose.
High-fructose corn syrup: 58% glucose, 42% fructose or 55% fructose, 45% glucose.
Honey: 50% fructose, 44% glucose, 1% sucrose.
Maple syrup: 95% sucrose, 4% sucrose, 1% fructose.
Molasses: 53% sucrose, 23% fructose, 21% glucose.
Orange juice concentrate: 46% sucrose, 28% fructose, 26% glucose.
Raw sugar, Table sugar, Confectioner's sugar, Baker's sugar, Powdered sugar: 100% sucrose.

(If the percentages don't equal 100% the remainder are other carbohydrates.)

That's right. Agave nectar, the darling of coconut milk nondairy alternatives, is much higher in fructose than HFCS. So is apple juice content rate. And honey is basically the equivalent of HFCS.

If you want to scorn HFCS you're free to do so. Just be aware that the alternatives may have far more fructose that they aren't telling you about. It's not the food: it's how much you have of it and what percentage that plays in your overall diet. Please don't get fooled by phony claims of "organic" or "natural." First understand the chemistry and composition of food. Then make wise decisions.

Sugars and Carbohydrates

I've pointed you to the excellent articles on Medical News Today, especially those written by Christian Nordqvist before, in fact just a month ago with All About Diarrhea.

Here's yet another excellent summary, on carbohydrates and sugars.
Again, the article is much too long to summarize and is well worth reading. I just want to excerpt the section explaining the types of sugars themselves, something of particular interest to those of us who have problems digesting disaccharides into monosaccharides.

What are saccharides?

Saccharides, or carbohydrates, are sugars or starches. Saccharides consist of two basic compounds:

Aldehydes - composed of double-bonded carbon and oxygen atoms, plus a hydrogen atom.

Ketones - composed of double-bonded carbon and oxygen atoms, plus two additional carbon atoms.

There are various types of saccharides:

Monosaccharide - this is the smallest possible sugar unit. Examples include glucose, galactose or fructose. When we talk about blood sugar we are referring to glucose in the blood; glucose is a major source of energy for a cell. In human nutrition, galactose can be found most readily in milk and dairy products, while fructose is found mostly in vegetables and fruit.

When monosaccharides merge together in linked groups they are known as polysaccharides.

Disaccharide - two monosaccharide molecules bonded together. Disaccharides are polysaccharides - "poly…" specifies any number higher than one, while "di…" specifies exactly two. Examples of disaccharides include lactose, maltose, and sucrose. If you bond one glucose molecule with a fructose molecule you get a sucrose molecule.

Sucrose is found in table sugar, and is often formed as a result of photosynthesis (sunlight absorbed by chlorophyll reacting with other compounds in plants). If you bond one glucose molecule with a galactose molecule you get lactose, which is commonly found in milk.

Polysaccharide - a chain of two or more monosaccharides. The chain may be branched (molecule is like a tree with branches and twigs) or unbranched (molecule is a straight line with no twigs). Polysaccharide molecule chains may be made up of hundreds or thousands of monosaccharides.

Polysaccharides are polymers. A simple compound is a monomer, while a complex compound is a polymer which is made of two or more monomers. In biology, when we talk about building blocks, we are usually talking about monomers.

Sorbet: Dairy-Free But Watch the Sugar

Though the northeast is suffering through a June that features far more rainy days than scorchers, the calendar and the astronomers proclaim that we've arrived in summer. And since editors are slaves to calendars, garnering material weeks or months early to appear on the proscribed date, frozen dessert articles are appearing like clockwork. If anybody under the age of 50 understands what that metaphor means.

Therefore we have Erin Lindholm on amNewYork, who provided a terrific reminder that most frozen desserts are sugar-filled candy confections. They taste great, they satisfy the craving for coolness in the heat, but they need to be occasional treats. You can't load up on the cool stuff and then eat your way through the rest of the day without taking these extras into account.

Sorbets are especially subject to this blindness. Because they're fruit-based and often dairy-free, even fat-free, most people will think of them as a light and less calorific alternative to ice cream. That might be true. Even so, you might be surprised at the sugar wallop they're packing.

While it’s true that sorbet’s a lower-calorie, lower-fat (often fat-free) alternative to ice cream, and it’s made of fruit and often dairy-free, that’s not a green light to eat the whole pint in one sitting.

“It should still be considered a treat or dessert unless it’s homemade, and you know what’s really going into it,” noted nutritionist Liz Stein.

The first step, said Stein, is to check the sugar. For all their appeal, “sorbets are still loaded with sugar.”

In the four market brands taste-tested for this article — Ciao Bella, Haagen Dazs, Sharon’s and Whole Fruit — sugar per serving ranged from 19g to a whopping 38g, which is a huge variable when we’re talking about a scoop of frozen delight.

Second, said Stein, is figure out where the sugar’s coming from. The fruit accounts for some of it, but "you want to choose a sorbet that has natural sugar, as opposed to high-fructose corn syrup." Case-in-point: In four samples, we found everything from cane sugar to plain old "sugar" to corn syrup.

I'm not as much a foe of high-fructose corn syrup as Stein. Sugar is mostly sugar, with four calories per gram no matter what the source. Cane sugar is the same thing as "plain old sugar." Corn syrup is the simple sugar glucose. Sugar is glucose plus fructose in equal parts, but converts to glucose inside the body. High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is also glucose plus fructose, with a variety of blends from 42% fructose to 90% fructose depending on the needs of the final product. As a commercial syrup it also contains water, usually one-quarter of the total. This means that HFCS only has three calories per gram. It's made commercially starting from a corn syrup base.

I know that many people get hysterical over the tremendous amount of use of HFCS in consumer products, because it is much cheaper than sugar. (Remember that it's one-quarter really cheap water.) The science is not clear that HFCS promotes obesity or has any truly bad effects on the general population. My feeling is that any sugar consumed in large quantities is going to have an effect on obesity. It wasn't the switch to HFCS that made Americans obese, it was the change in habits, the lessening of physical activity, and the growth in portion size that made supersizing the new normal.

Back to the point. Go ahead, have a small sorbet as a summer treat. No reason at all to cut out treats entirely. Just remember that fruit or not, you're eating a cupful of sugar, with some cups having even more sugar than others. Moderation in all things, except moderation.

Splenda for Some Diabetics, Despite the Lactose

Last year I mentioned that Splenda Mini Tabs contain lactose as a filler. Those are different from the regular Splenda packets, which use dextrose and maltodextrin as fillers.

Well, every dark cloud has a silver lining or some such cliché.

Judy Barnes Baker on Commonvoice.com gave one reason why Splenda Mini Tabs may be especially useful to certain diabetics.

Dr. Richard Bernstein, author of Diabetes Solution and The Diabetes Diet prescribes a very low-carb diet to get his diabetic patients off medications or to reduce their dosage to the lowest possible level. He calls it “the law of small numbers” because the smaller the dose you need, the smaller the mistake you can make and the less severe the consequences. ... Sucralose is not a problem, but even the small amount of sugar used as a bulking agent in Splenda can be too much for those who are diabetic.

...

The other option is Splenda Mini Tabs. Their carb count is given as a generic “less than one gram,” which is the same as that given for a teaspoon of the granular. I contacted McNeil Nutritionals to find out what they really contain: Each tab contains 0.2 calories and 0.04 carbs, so just a trace. The bulking agent is a tiny bit of lactose. You can crush the tablets between two spoons and use them in recipes. One mini tab equals the sweetness of one teaspoon of sugar. I think even the low-carb Taliban would approve.

The extremely tiny pills contain only an extremely tiny amount of lactose. You'd have to be on the far, far fringes of the curve of lactose intolerance sensitivity to have any reaction at all to such a tiny amount of lactose.

I get an aftertaste from the sweeteners Bernstein does allow, so I greatly prefer Splenda as a substitute. I'd certainly go ahead and include it on such a diet if I had the option, even with that tiny bit of lactose.

Sugar Substitutes

Creating sweet powders to substitute for sugar in beverages and recipes is a science today, not a matter of accidents in the lab. Creations go well beyond those little colored packages in a bowl on your restaurant table.

DiabetesHealth.com reprints an article by Michael R. Eades and Mary Dan Eades that goes over the pros and cons of about a dozen sugar substitutes. It doesn't excerpt well, so I advice you to take a look at the full article.

Substitutes considered include:

Acesulfame K
Aspartame
Cyclamate
Erythritol
Saccharine (Sweet 'n' Low)
Sorbitol, Mannitol and Maltitol
Stevia
Sucralose (Splenda)
Tagatose
Xylitol

NOTE: Though tagatose is derived from lactose, it undergoes additional processing steps before the final product is marketed. I know of no evidence that it should be considered a dairy product or dairy derivative. Tagatose is found naturally in very small amounts in milk, which may lead to some confusion, but that is not the route taken for commercial manufacturing.

The Facts, Avoided

Mary Lee Stotler wrote that Even fake sweeteners ought to be avoided.

She asks:

As I waited in line at the drive-thru last week, I heard the woman behind me order a supersized meal with a sandwich and large fries, and then order a diet soft drink.

In what universe does that make sense?

I have a question myself. In what universe does washing that meal down with gallons of sugared water make better sense?

Her column is called The Facts.

We've gotten beyond satire and irony, folks.

Lactose in Sweeteners

A long, long time ago, before the Net - yes, kiddies, such a dark age did exist - doctors' offices would give out sheets of information on products containing lactose.

I never found out where the information in these sheets came from. Probably they emanated from whatever the equivalent of old wives' tales and urban legends were in medical schools. They were usually inaccurate, misleading, and overly scary.

Most of them had a notation that sugar substitutes contained lactose.

If that was ever true, few commercial substitutes with lactose were on the market even back in 1984 when I wrote my first book on lactose intolerance. As far as I know, those too went away and the problem didn't exist, to all intents and purposes, for over 20 years.

But food technology changes, and old established brands mutate into new forms.

On a recent trip to a supermarket, I found new versions of both Splenda and Equal on the shelves. Splenda Minis and Equal Tablets come in pocket-sized dispensers, perfect for holding over a cup of coffee or unsweetened ice tea or anything that will dissolve a tiny tablet's worth of sugar equivalent.



Handy, but.

The same technology must be involved in both cases because the first ingredients - before the sucralose in Splenda's case and before the aspartame in Equal - is... lactose.

None of their other variations in granular or packet form contain lactose, and I checked several other competitors and found no lactose there either. It's only in the tablets.

These are truly tiny tablets. We're talking maybe 5 mm or 3/16 of an inch. The amount of lactose in any one tablet is so small that they can still legitimately claim that the tablets have 0 calories.

Still, I think you should know. The addition of lactose means that the tablets cannot be considered vegan and they are no longer pareve. Those with dairy allergies who avoid the presence of lactose in medications should also avoid these tablets.

A useful item. Just not for everyone.

How to Write a Blog Entry, with Spice

Think these entries just come to me fully formed, like Athena from the head of Zeus?

Oh my children, not so easy.

I'm up late, checking the news for any mention of lactose intolerance. What's this? An Australian gossip column. Always a first choice for health information.

Trotting through the marquee was Skeletal Spice's hairdresser, Ben Cooke (with pal Angela Weigard), so we asked him how Posh stays so skeletal. "She's wheat-intolerant and lactose-intolerant," Ben said. "She eats fruit, steamed white fish and vegies." We didn't think she gorged on chops.

It's not news that Victoria Beckham, alias Posh Spice, is lactose intolerant, at least not to those who read LI Celebrity Alert: Orlando Bloom and Victoria Beckham. And just what does a diet of fruit, steamed white fish and vegies have to do with lactose intolerance? Poshie, those chops are just as lactose free.

Silliness. But somehow that leads me to Want to be skinny? Sassy diet book tells how by John Rogers of The Associated Press.

Which tells of the latest manifestation of our celebrity madness, of how Skeletal, er, Posh, er, Victoria, made a book famous merely by picking it up and never reading it.

"Skinny Bitch" [by former models Kim Barnouin and Rory Freedman] quickly became a word-of-mouth hit upon publication in December 2005. More than 200,000 copies are in print, according to its publisher, Running Press of Philadelphia.

It got a significant international boost in May when L.A.'s hottest skinny celebrity, Victoria "Posh Spice" Beckham, playfully held up a copy at the trendy Kitson's boutique in Hollywood while paparazzi clicked away.

"She never bought the book ---- she just picked it up," Fraser Ross, the store's owner, told The Associated Press.

But no matter, "Skinny Bitch," shot up top sellers lists in Beckham's native England and broke through to the No. 3 spot on The New York Times paperback advice list of best sellers.

Hmmm. Promising. Skinny Bitch is a vegan cookbook, and those are a staple of my posting.

I do a bit of checking first. I don't endorse any of the books I mention in this blog, but I try to find out enough about them so that the truly nutty science-is-what-we-say-it-is wackjobs are screened out.

So what's the first thing that I find? A blog by lushposh. No, seriously. I've stopped trying to make this stuff up. And a blog post of hers titled Skinny Bitch: A Beginner’s Guide. It even has a picture of Kim.
Or of Rory. It doesn't matter. They've merged into one in my head, a mouthpiece for the worst junk diet advice you'll get this side of a homeopath.

All this from lushposh, who interviewed Rory and got the horseshit from the horse's mouth. Remember, lushposh is an admirer. She put all this stuff on her blog and thought it made wonderful sense. No child left behind, indeed.

The basic concept of the Skinny Bitch diet is surprisingly simple: "You need to get healthy if you want to get skinny." And to be healthy by the authors’ definition, you should eat foods that are easy to digest, rich in nutrients and free of harmful additives.

That means saying goodbye to sugar (aka "the devil") and products containing it, and not just because of empty calories. "When sugar enters your body, it’s acidic," Freedman says. "When you put acidic foods into your body, in order to protect your organs, your body produces fat cells."

Again, I am not making this up. This is coming from an author of one of the best selling diet books in the country. Or at least of a country in which sugar is acidic (it's not) and it doesn't make the most essential energy component of metabolism (glucose, the end product of all sugar breakdown) and causes fat cells to appear as protection (a scam unknown even to the Mafia.)

But there's hope.

"Kim and I are pigs," she declares. "We live to eat, and there’s no reason you should have to live without cookies. We just read the ingredients and look for better substitutes for sugar, like evaporated cane juice, brown rice syrup, molasses, raw sugar, beet sugar, maple syrup, things like that."

Things like that there. Let's go over them there things.

▪ evaporated cane juice - sugar
▪ brown rice syrup - sugar
▪ molasses - sugar
▪ raw sugar - sugar
▪ beet sugar - sugar
▪ maple syrup - sugar

Some of these are chemically identical to sucrose, or table sugar; others, like brown rice syrup, is a mixture of complex carbohydrates and maltose. Maltose is just two molecules of glucose. All of these sugars behave identically in the body, breaking down to glucose. None are nutritionally better for you. Perhaps one must approach them on the metaphysical plane to truly appreciate their spiritual side. Science it ain't, though.

The rest is a mosh of every bad vegan myth that any sensible vegan should be embarrassed to be associated with.

Meat takes a long time to break down in the body, and much of it ends up just staying put, blocking the intestines and slowing the metabolism.

Blather.

"You are physiologically addicted to cheese because it contains casein, which breaks down into opiates in your body," Freedman explains.

Yes, casein breaks down into casomorphins, a scary-sounding chemical whose dreadness can be found all over the vegan literature, although, tellingly, not anywhere else. It's identical to morphine apparently, although somehow also only one-tenth its strength. What happens to the casomorphins once you eat them? I haven't found any medical research that can answer that question, but no good anti-milk conspiracy theorist would let that stop them from proclaiming that cheese is addictive.

I can't stop a juggernaut like Skinny Bitches just by mocking its lack of science. That's obviously one of its selling points. The two-headed, four-breasted Kim/Rory monster dresses up the thinnest nutritional advice - skip sugar, eat fruits, go for whole grains - with thick slabs of pseudoscience, short skirts, bare midriffs, blonde hair and a you go girl insouciance filtered though a potty mouth. Who needs science when you have all that?

Me. Just me against the world. And against Posh Spice. Who looks like this.


I just lost, didn't I?

FDA Approves New Sugar Substitute

Isomaltulose doesn't exactly trip off the tongue. What about something more palatable? Palatinose, perhaps. Would you put that in your products?

Perhaps you should. Isomaltulose, which is being produced under the trade name of Palatinose by German manufacturer Palatinit, is a combination of glucose and fructose. Normally you know a combination of glucose and fructose as sucrose, or common table sugar. Give it a slight enzymatic twist and it develops properties that are particularly desirable.

An article by Clarisse Douaud on FoodProductionDaily-USA.com gave details on what some of those properties are.

[T]he sweetener is said to maintain sweetness while also having a low glycemic effect. It can be used to enhance the nutritional value of foods since it is digested much more slowly than sucrose, providing energy over a longer time period.

And the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has authorized a non-cariogenic health claim for isomaltulose. Non-cariogenic means that it does not promote caries, or tooth decay, because the oral bacteria that digest other sugars like sucrose, lactose, and fructose can't break down isomaltulose's unique molecular form.

This has potentially huge applications in the commercial world.

According to Palatinit, the approval of isomaltulose as a non-cariogenic sweetener could lead to new opportunities for product development and specific dental health claims, such as "does not promote tooth decay" or "may reduce the risk of dental caries".

Palatinose is produced from real sugar, but its strong molecular binding ensures it cannot be broken down by plaque bacteria and prevents the generation of acids that harm tooth enamel. As such, dental caries do not form with Palatinose.

The sweetener was originally developed as a means to help manage diabetes as part of a low-glycemic diet. Palatinit claims its sweetener is the only low-glycaemic carbohydrate that supplies energy in the form of glucose over a prolonged period of time. However, it also has advantages for beverage applications.

Palatinit says that Palatinose is non-hygroscopic, making it ideal in instant drinks as it does not lump and remains dispersible. In dairy products, too, it can be used as a carbohydrate because it is resistant to fermentation by the surrounding microbes and lactobacilli.

Palatinose is also applicable in weight control and 'slimming' products. Liquid meal replacements with milk, fruit or cereal as well as instant tea and specialty coffee could also be repositioned in the wellness sector with Palatinose.

If the sweetener can replace lactose in commercial products, then it would be a boon to the many groups who have to avoid lactose.

This will undoubtedly take a while, as lactose is a cheap sugar easily refined from what would other be the waste product from cheese manufacturing and isomaltulose will be expensive at first, but any good alternative sweetener is bound to cut into the market for lactose in the long run.

Beware Whey Low

A sugar substitute that is low is calories and has no aftertaste sounds like an achievement. But what if one of its ingredients is lactose?



Lee Zehner, who holds a doctorate in chemistry, developed Whey Low after his wife, Sue, was diagnosed with diabetes in 1999, wrote Rosalie Robles Crowe in the Arizona Daily Star.

He makes it out of sucrose, fructose and lactose because he:

theorized that if the three sugars could be formulated the right way, they wouldn't be fully absorbed by the body, thereby making the sugar more healthful. Not only that, it would eliminate the gastrointestinal problems that often accompany the use of sugar alcohols.

The chemistry of Whey Low is interesting:

"There is an interaction among the three sugars that prevents the sucrose and lactose from being fully absorbed in the small intestine."

Basically, that's where nutrients are broken down and absorbed into the body, he said, adding, "If it doesn't happen there, it doesn't happen."

Instead, the sucrose and the lactose pass into the large intestine, which contains good and bad bacteria.

"Lactose is known to feed the good bacteria, forcing out the bad bacteria. Meanwhile, sucrose is simply consumed by all bacteria," Zehner said.

This reads to me as if Whey Low dumps undigested lactose into the large intestine. True, those people with the right bacteria may not experience any symptoms. But a good many of us with lactose intolerance do not have the "good" bacteria.

Whey Low is just beginning to reach the market.

Retail stores, mostly in the East and Midwest, are beginning to stock Whey Low. A few commercial bakeries and other such companies also are using it in their products.

Worse, you'll find it in some restaurants, such as Rock Creek Restaurant in Bethesda, MD.

On the Whey Low FAQ page, they address lactose intolerance:

8. Is the milk sugar (lactose) in Whey Low® problematic for lactose-intolerant individuals?

The small amount of milk sugar in Whey Low® has not caused any problems of which we are aware. The three lactose-intolerant consumers in our Consumer Survey reported no gastrointestinal disturbances at all from the use of Whey Low®. Lactose-intolerant people can ingest as much as a single dose of 12 grams of lactose per day (equivalent to the lactose in one 8-oz. glass of milk) without any symptoms, according to Suarez FL, Savaiano DA, and Levitt MD, N Engl J Med. 1995 Jul 6;333(1):1-4. Normal daily consumption of Whey Low® as a tabletop sweetener should not cause any problem for lactose-intolerant individuals.

It's obviously true that the small amount of lactose in a single packet of sweetener is probably not an issue for most people with lactose intolerance, just as the amount of lactose in a single pill is not an issue.

I am concerned, though, that the amount used in baking may add up. And the oral testimony of three people is worthless as an actual test measure.

My conditional advice, therefore, is to avoid Whey Low or use it very sparingly to see what it's effects will be.

And the same holds true for people with dairy allergies. Pure crystalline lactose should contain no dairy proteins, and those who are not known to be anaphylactic to dairy probably will not have any reaction to it. As always, though, be very cautious.