As someone who is also severely lactose intolerant, this is something you figure out through trial and error (or I should really say trial and extreme digestive system upset). Unless the food product is clear with mentioning "no lactose", you can only trust that product will contain a "minimum upper bounds of 500 milligrams of lactose per serving for products labeled “0g sugar”" and it could have that much as the author says.
I basically take lactase enzyme pills everytime I have a dairy product. Better to be safe than sorry
> I basically take lactase enzyme pills everytime I have a dairy product.
Sorry I'm not familiar with lactase enzyme or lactose intolerance, but wouldn't this be the reccomended usage? Or is it suggested to take the pills only when eating something with especially high lactose content?
Usually on the bottle of lactase enzyme pills it will just say "take before consuming a lactose-containing product." But actual usage will really depend on the degree of lactose intolerance of the person. For example my wife is only mildly lactose intolerant: she can consume hard cheeses and many processed products containing dairy just fine, but soft cheese, milk, cream, etc. will give her digestive problems.
She mostly gets by simply avoiding these things, but she really really loves a good quality burrata so she will take an enzyme pill when she wants to indulge.
Try lacto-free milk instead of the pills :) I have better experiences with that than with the pills (no matter of the concentration of lactase in the pills)
Lacto-free milk is produced by throwing in a handful of lactase pills into the milk. But not the whole lactase is used up in the milk, so one get plenty of lactase while drinking
In my opinion, the best lactose free milk has some lactose filtration in the process. The brands that just dump lactase on the milk without filtering lactose are actually sweet, like they dumped a bunch of sugar in it.
It's not possible to filter lactose out of the milk. The only possibility to get lactose free milk is to split lactose into glucose and galactose with the enzyme lactase. And that's actually is done: just dump lactase into cow milk. I never drank not sweet lactose free milk.
But, if one is about to make a milk powder, then it is possible to remove the split lactose sugar crystals. But it's not milk anymore..
You can do it the other way around: instead of filtering lactose out of the milk you filter the solids making a protein and fats concentrate.
This is mostly used as a preprocessing step for cheese production, but by rehydrating you get ultra-filtered milk, which are lactose-free and not sweet.
Oh yes.. I haven't thought of this. Oh my. Ultrafiltration by/with osmosis and a semi permeable membrane allows to remove water and small molecules. The same process as dialysis-treatment in kidney failure. To get the sugar and water solubles out of milk, you need to pull a bit of the water from the milk and with it all the stuff that is smaller than the holes in the membrane (filter). And then, you readd plain water or take the ultrafiltrate and do a second stage of filtering with even finer membrane. And readd this to the now concentrated, thick milk. If it's not like the principle of dialysis, then maybe be like lipidapheresis which is a bit different in function. Or a Mix of the two systems :)
From my understanding they take advantage of lactose being smaller than milk and they just get the milk "stuck" in the filter and then throw out the unfiltered lactose.
Yes, they do it with ultrafiltration and as the patent says with nano filtration and, with salt addition to get reversed osmosis. The steps are quite clear described.
AFAIK, lactose intolerance is a spectrum. I come from a country with spotty lactose tolerance so I've known multiple intolerant people. Just to give you an example:
I am mildly intolerant. I can have a small glass of whole milk with some discomfort, namely gas and bloated stomach. People who are highly intolerant would have a really, really bad time with the same amount with cramps, diarrhea and whatnot.
Me too. I can drink half a glas of whole milk, eat all the cheese except for tête de moine, and eat half a block of butter, without a problem.
If it comes to a situation where it's impossible to avoid consumption of high in lactose products, I drink the lactose-free milk and do not take the enzymes (lactase). The milk already contains a lot of lactase. The enzyme tablets do not work with me somehow :)
Sadly is the case for me as well. A friend of mine went vegan just for the sake of at least it eliminated any possibility of diary products in their food.
At least in the UK the enzyme pills can add up quite quickly in cost.
Buy lacto-free milk and drink that instead of the pills. In my experience, it's much better than the pills and works faster and better - enzymes added to whole milk are the same as in the pills.
I, for me, wouldn't go vegan, as then supplements are needed and that add really up in costs :(
> I, for me, wouldn't go vegan, as then supplements are needed and that add really up in costs
There's only a couple of vitamins that aren't easy to get naturally on a vegan diet (B12 and D), but those are frequently added to fortified foods, so additional supplements aren't always needed. But generic B12 and D2 are pretty cheap anyway, and it's certainly not nessesary to use an expensive multivitamin to live healthily on a vegan diet.
I just hear everywhere one needs ferrum, D2, B12. With ferrum, I can't believe, a supplement is needed. It's plenty every. One bowl of Muesli a day, keeps the ferrum pill away. In my imagination. But B12 is important in the long run. Females especially need it while pregnancy. And idk whatever else it's needed for. That's understandable by me, too. But it's not a reason to not go vegan. You're right. D2 is not a problem when it's sunny outside and one show skin. It can be a problem in the dark days in winter, but there's still a tanning studio, if one wants. And if not, it's just a few pennies away. You're right, too. As lactase for lactose in milk products is, too. It's pennies. So actually, it wasn't meant as "nono vegan no good. Megan better.". If one think thoroughly, the disadvantages being vegan are all very small, but still bigger than, the best in my eyes, the ovolactovegi. The disadvantages eating meat sum up with the consumption and are differently difficult to compensate. It was because of precedent comment said some other went vegan because avoidance of dietary products on the context of the preprecedent one .. almond milk...
It's a personal choice. But you have to take care of the chemistry added in the vegan food one can buy. Not everywhere and in each product, but you have to pick the ones first. For example: diphosphate and triphosphate ..f.e. backing agent is pure phosphate. German Sausages, meat products often have di-and triphosphates. Beans and cheese and virtually anything with proteins also have phosphates. While it's needed, too much of it will lead to arteriosclerosis. The more you eat the more a problem it is. The problem is more severe if one consumes/has high levels of calcium in blood and some distinctionality or starting or ongoing kidney problems, or dialysis. So, one does exactly this when drinking the oatly oat milk.. high in calcium and added di/triphosphates. Do this over a course of years :) the same with the products of vegan butcher (as I reconcile properly)..
If vegan, then do everything yourself. I could imagine it's enjoyable.
Lacto free milk only works for when you are making stuff from scratch and not buying pre-made stuff. For whenever I use milk, I buy almond these days as it's marginally cheaper and I think it tastes nicer on a personal preference.
It works after ingestion, no matter if pre- or while-made stuff. Lactose free milk is made by throwing in lactase. But not all lactase is used up in this process and still plenty is left in the milk.
Almond milk or the other "artificial" milk-a-likes are most of the times pure chemistry. You have to read the contents. Phosphates are added a lot (actually a big problem for people with kidney diseases, but also might be problematic for healthy ones as phosphates are added literally everywhere and the daily consumption amount might become to much) and stabilizers and all the other stuff needed for the artificial milk to look and to mouth-feel like the ordinary milk
It's more accurate to call them "emulsions." Some cheaper oat milks will actually fall slightly out of solution in the water and as a result you can see the fine grains. Soy milk, for example, can be used to make a kind of cheese analog called Tofu. A lot of oat milks have some gums or other thickeners mixed in not necessarily just because of mouthfeel but also because it makes the milk steamable for use with espresso. They're natural extracts from trees or other plants.
You can't really call them unnatural because the techniques used are available to home cooks using off-the-shelf ingredients. I can buy thickeners and render oats into a fine enough powder to make oat milk, for example.
I'm personally more concerned about water usage per gallon of "milk-like product." Almond milk is pretty bad where that's concerned because almond trees consume an enormous amount of water that's often pumped out of aquifers at faster than the recovery rate.
I call them unnatural because they're added where they're needed to achieve certain properties which aren't achievable without adding the needed unnatural stuff. Not because they're artificially designed like the sweeteners. Or artificially made like the glutamate which is identical to natural glutamate everywhere.
You can't call stabilizers on phosphate basis natural extracts from trees. They aren't. These are chemicaly designed and made in a chemical process. Even if they are chemicaly exact, which is not the case, the amounts needed of that stuff exceed the available Carob gum trees by far. But the trees have phosphate. It's among carbon
the second column of life. :)
The article doesn't mention di/triphosphates, it doesn't mention potassium and a lot of others. It's all a question of the amount consumed and that depends on the products and the consumers body/health.
Industrially made vegan products are more chemistry than homemade, about the same within pre processed food, and even more chemistry as if one would eat steak & cheese & potato in various shapes 3x a day.
And then, which of the vegan guys does make the meat imitation chicken teriyaki at home or never eat in restaurants outside?
But the Link is a good read. And it's not over, just study contents of all the products next time in the supermarket. I can't buy half of the products :)
No it's not. A cow lives much longer and eat while alive plants that needed water by themselves before. A cow must drink and it lose water naturally. Almond doesn't eat other plants, but lose water naturally too. Could be the possibel argumentation. So, I would say, one does not even have to Google this.. it's logical :) and then, you have a lot of cows but also a lot of almonds.
May be not directly the lactase, but the split' lactose. Lactose is split into (milk) sugar by lactase enzyme. Lacto-free milk is sweeter than whole milk. So, it's the same problem with as with all sugars.
This is the only way to live and keep living when someone is having life threatening condition due to food allergy.
My wife 'only' have coeliac so it is not life threatening 'only' have (lasting) long term consequences but still - or precisely for this, due to its stealthy nature - we are very diligent. We, not only she, because it affects daily life of both of us. Our home is a gluten free zone. People do not bring here any consumables when they are unaware of its composition. Eating out safely is non-existent. She accepts a certain and unknown level of damage - that is not prominent at the time. There are rules, law, but there are rules for taxation and speed limits too, yet people break those rules. When they have related risks on themselves as well. Not like here where the direct consequence (so excluding law breaking) is on others. People could be sloppy, people could be tired. People could be clueless but pretend otherwise. People could lie their socks off for 2 dollars more income if the consequence is almost exclusively on someone else. People make mistakes, conditions are not always full in control. And there are the vague, inadequate and easy to circumnavigate regualtions that we cannot rely on. Even in places we know we tend to talk repeatedly about coeliac approaches because personnel change, business incentive and owners' incentives evolve. And still we never know if someone is lieing or clueless. Luckily talking with them we developed a sense of if the person in front of you is aware and straight, taking about things seriously that affects your health and wellbeing only. Nomally the most reassuring places are the ones we avoid as they either not aware of the difficulty of the situation (e.g. cross contamination, brought in contaminants by personel, ..), or just do not care and lie with a kind face. Those with doubt at least think it through honestly.
But for us it is not (immediate) life or death situation. Still lots of sacrifice (cannot travel calmly and freely, very little dining out, cooking is the primary center of life, time and energy consuming, ...). Still nowhere near to those with life threatening food allergy. Sacrifice is life for those with condition, or easily no life at all.
And this is where I cannot understand ignorant people who endanger their loved ones by taking unnecessary risk, like the mother who's child is now dead in London after having a sip of hot chocolate from Costa. Was it worth it? No. Aware, emphasizing the situation to the staff that looks smug about it yet still risking having allergic reaction while carrying no epi-pen either? I hate that this aspect is not reflected at all in media report only that Costa staff killed the poor little girl (well, they did, or at least caused it), causing unimaginable suffering to the mother. For a cup of hot chocolate. For fuck's sake people, take it seriusly and be cautious like the blog author here and you, the OP. Your and your loved one's life depend on it, do not put into the hand of others having no incentives, or worse, only having contrary incentives!
The term serving or serving size means an amount of food customarily consumed per eating occasion by persons 4 years of age or older which is expressed in a common household measure that is appropriate to the food.
This means manufacturer's are free to make serving sizes based on how little a hypothetical four year old child might eat in theory. There aren't any substantial penalties for inaccuracy. There can be substantial incentives for optimistic labeling.
Just as a counterpoint, in Europe the requirement is to specify nutrition data per 100 g of "usable" product. Some products are e.g. intended to be added to water before consumption, then the nutrition is for that final form, not for the concentrate that you actually buy.
But it's really practical, it makes it dead easy to e.g. compare calories, sugar, fat and so on between e.g. milk and apple sauce (to take random example from the breakfast table this morning).
> in Europe the requirement is to specify nutrition data per 100 g of "usable" product
Source? that doesn't seem true and seems prone to the same serving size tricks used in US. My experience it that nutritional values per 100g of product (actual raw product no matter what its final form is supposed to be) are always listed first.
Then if you're supposed to mix it with water there can be e.g., optionally, a nutritional table per 100ml of finished product.
I'm not sure, whether you both are talking about the same thing. But, it's some kind of true and, as you said, not true..
One get the information for 100g of the product and also, most of the times, one get the nutrition information of a typical serving size of the final product.
So, if you buy a Snickers, the contents are listed per 100g and also for the weight of that one bar of Snickers (e g
70g). Or, when the product is to be mixed, the nutrition information is given for the amount of the product needed for mixing a serving size. It's a psychological trick, when the product is much less then 100g, or little more, the consumers are tricked into perceiving less sugar and less whatever.. but yes, it's not mandatory but rather a decision of marketing.
~It's true.~ Edit: sorry I misread the previous comment. It's 100g "as sold". Not "as prepared".
> All the information must be expressed per 100g or per 100ml. It may also, in addition, be expressed per portion or per consumption unit of the product.
That doesn't say anything. It just says it may be more convenient to express data per 100 ml if you have a liquid product.
Can you cite the article where it says you can express nutritional data with respect to a final form of the product you mix yourself and not list the per 100g/100ml data? I'm still very skeptic but would be quite interesting if that was really allowed.
Anecdotally, I am used to seeing the prepared nutrition values for certain food types here in Norway (which is aligned with EU regulation through EEA). It is quite common, and not always acompanied by values for raw unprepared product.
From Article 31:
"Where appropriate, the information may relate to the food after preparation, provided that sufficiently detailed preparation instructions are given and the information relates to the food as prepared for consumption."
I'm quite surprised as it adds ambiguity and complexity and leaves a backdoor open for playing with serving sizes and dilutions. I mean they could list the instructions for a diluted final product that makes the values look good but the actual preparation everyone does is way more concentrated.
Fortunately it doesn't seem that exploited if not for very specific products.
You're correct that the requirement is for 100g/100ml "as sold" not "as prepared". The other commenter is incorrect.
So milk powder, for example, would have a mandatory nutrition label showing 100g of powder and then the company can optionally add a second label showing nutrition for a serving of prepared liquid milk.
Since most companies add whatever serving makes it look best it becomes habitual to filter out the serving size info.
If anyone wants to dive further into this it's EU regulation 1169/2011 Annex 1.
Apologies from me, see tikkosam comment, it seems true indeed. There is an exception that allows this practice in article 31. My trust in EU regulations took a tiny hit today.
> seems prone to the same serving size tricks used in US
I've only noticed it on what we call "squash", or fruit juice concentrate. When I was a kid, the labels would say 1 part concentrate to 6 parts water, and we'd do it about 1 to 4. Now, we've gone through double concentrate and a lot are "4x" now, but e.g. the bottle in front of me says "typical values per 100ml (diluted 1 part with 19 parts water)" and a serving size of 250ml (which actually provides more precision than the per 100ml value). I think these standard serving sizes are defined somewhere, as I think it's always 250ml for every kind of drink that comes from a large container, and either the exact quantity or an integer division of it for things that come in smaller containers, e.g a 330ml can.
The way it handles quantities is interesting. When is seems to mean trace, it uses "<0.1g" as distinct from a small amount where it uses "<0.5g". Sugars are listed as "0.5g" in the 250ml serving and "<0.5g" per 100ml. Fibre and protein are "<0.5g" everywhere, and fat is the weird one as it says "<0.5g per 250 ml, of which saturates <0.1g, mono-unsaturates <0.1g, polyunsaturates <0.1g".
Finally, you can be pretty sure of the actual composition due to the calories, listed as 15kJ or 4 kcal per 250ml (use the kJ puts this at 3.5-37kcal per 250ml). Knowing that sugar is 3.87kcal per 1g, protein is 4.0kcal per 1g and fat is 898kcal per 1g (most people approximate per gram to 4 for carbs+protein and 9 for fat). So for the 0.5g of sugar, that's approx 2kcal, so there's either about 0.4g of protein or about 0.2g of fat or somewhere in-between. Just from what's in the juice, I expect the "missing calories" are mostly protein.
Obviously, none of that tells you anything about lactose (except that it's fruit juice and there's no reason why it would contain any).
Ingredients rather than final foods typically specify nutrition "per 100g as sold" and invent a serving side either by telling you how to prepare it (e.g. OXO gravy cubes say to dissolve 1 cube in 190ml of water for 2 servings) or invent some arbitrary serving size like 5g for a condiment. This seems in line with what you've seen, but definitely squash that is intended to be diluted doesn't do that (at least in the UK, and for the squash I buy).
Same here in Australia. It's crazy that in the US you have to work out how big a "serving" is and do a bunch of math to work out how much sugar is in something.
Plus the placebo effect which is the only reason you get instant energy from any kind of energy drink. Even pure liquid sucrose takes at least 30 minutes to digest (aside from a negligible amount that's digested in the mouth.
There's some interesting studies that show energy gain during a workout from just rinsing your mouth with an energy drink and not swallowing any.
At least 30 minutes, apparently. Any effect you feel before that is placebo.
Which shouldn't be read as "not real". The placebo effect means that actual physiological changes are happening in your body, they have just been initiated by your PNI system rather than the the substance.
No, "usable" product cannot be quite the correct expression. The macros per 100g of dry pasta are for the dry, not the cooked product. I'd venture to guess that few people eat their pasta dry.
Not sure how to express it then, but on the other hand beverages sold as concentrate and mixed with water before drinking ("cordials" in English, I think) seem less common elsewhere so perhaps it's a local/Swedish thing and not a very good thing to focus on at all. :)
[1]: Like https://orklafoodsrs.se/produkt/454051626, scroll down and the nutritional info ("Näringsvärde") is right there and it's clearly the diluted drinkable version, not the concentrate.
Someone else dug up what is probably the correct answer: "Where appropriate, the information may relate to the food after preparation, provided that sufficiently detailed preparation instructions are given and the information relates to the food as prepared for consumption."
And it's really confusing for someone like me who is tracking calories
Iirc it was even worse because it was for a bag of dehydrated potatoes that used a mix of water and milk on the recipe.
Another example was noodles, it is sometimes said for 100ml of finished product (at this point tell me the calories for the entirety of the pack or 100gr of it)
That's also why cooking spray, which is 100% fat, can be advertised as having 0 grams of fat. Because 1/3 of a second of spray, the serving size, has less than the minimum amount of fat you need to declare.
I developed a severe dairy protein allergy in my late 30s. At first, I thought it was just a lactose issue but anything dairy triggers it (with symptoms aligning with vasculitis). While I'm not vegan, it's just easier to eat vegan food when I go to a restaurant. I generally know what's safe from the grocery store but always look for the Contains Milk or Dairy Free labels.
The labeling is extremely important. I find it upsetting that there aren't more rigid requirements for labeling common allergens. Given that a large percentage of people are at least mildly lactose intolerant by the time they hit age 70, you would think this would have stricter labeling requirements.
My son is anaphylactic on contact with cow's milk.
We're on an experimental program to reverse this by dosing him with milks closer and closer to cow's. If you're interested (and courageous) try camel milk - it's the furthest away milk from cow in the program.
My understanding is that it is somewhat common in adults to have a virus (cold, flu, etc) trigger a dairy protein allergy. They’re most often irreversible, or so the MDs told me. Anyhow, it’s been 15 years without dairy so I’m used to living without it. There are far more high quality non-dairy alternatives now than there were even 5 years ago, thankfully!
I am in my mid 30's, moved to US from India a few years back, after lot of suffering, visit to Urgent care, Colonoscopy and lot trial and error I found out it was the milk which was causing the issue, currently I consume low fat lactose free milk and non fat greek yogurt from Costco.
one question I keep wondering about is, do I have lactose intolerance or issue with digesting milk fat from cow milk. I am able to consume all products with any amount of fat content made from Buffalo milk inlcuding lactose (Buffalo milk is predominantly used in India)
Getting my lactose intolerance diagnosis changed my life. I was having all sorts of bad pains & issues. At one point I thought I had kidney problems because of the pains in the area. I stopped drinking alcohol. The GP did so many tests - I was fit and healthy. Then he suggested an elimination diet. I was sceptical, but after 2 weeks I felt like I had been reborn.
Many of the ills I had had over the years had been misdiagnosed (antibiotics for a bladder infection, for example - turns out it was just bloating and internal pressure from my bowel).
It's so nice being able to sleep properly at night, and also not have random diarrhea/bloating/pains. My mental health is also great - the link between gut health & depression etc needs much more research.
I remember when I was in grad school, I was out with drinks with a bunch of students from the biology department. One of them was talking about finishing up a paper to submit to the FDA on a drug she was testing. She called the FDA "the department of legalized rounding". Another author on her paper was proposing that they could round ".445" to ".45" and then to ".5" so that they could be above a threshold to go on to the next phase. She was horrified, but they were going through the regulations because it wasn't clear that it was prohibited.
It does in sane countries where nutrition labels are required to also include the per-100g stats.
But in North America, they only need to show the per-serving column. Combine that with the <0.5g rule and the fact they are allowed to pick the serving size, you end up with tic tacs which don't mention any sugar on their labels.
If it's 1/2g sugar per Tic Tac and a serving is two Tic Tacs, then we're talking about 4 calories. That's not significant, is it? Just about anything else you eat probably differs from the label by more than 4 cal.
the US has been partially metricated for a long time. All the American imperial unit definitions are actually pegged to metric and have been since the 19th century. The most common unit of soda is the 2-liter bottle. And so on.
It depends on the jurisdiction. Some places require totals per 100g, whereas others are "per serving", which allows you to say 0 to pretty much everything if that "serving" is 0.5g or less.
0g means less than half a gram per serving. Given an arbitrarily small serving size, everything has 0g of sugar. Like how PAM spray grease has 0G of fat due to a tiny serving size.
famously different type of dry sausages, e.g fuet.
Although, I'd not call it 'secret', at least in the vast majority of the EU, it is listed. It's another story it's listed in the local language which is rather "unpleasant" (inconvenient) if you travel (esp. road trips)
I ignore all or most of these labels anyways. Only need to look at the ingredients on an item to see how much garbage these companies put in what is supposed to be edible food.
0g sugar? Nah, we got sugar substitute.
Then when you look at the refrigerated aisle, it’s loaded up with shit tons of sodium and a metric shit ton of “preservatives” and artificial flavorings.
Yum. The food system in America is absolutely broken.
I can confirm. It's more than superior. It's a different product.
If you mix a soup spoon of balsamico vinegar, a half of cup of boiling hot water, 2 spoons of olive oil and put in 1 bay leaf, half a handful of juniper berries, black and red pepper, salt and a little bit of grinded nutmeg, and of course, put the búfala mozzarella. And let it rest cooled for a few days in the refrigerator, you'll be in paradise!
I basically take lactase enzyme pills everytime I have a dairy product. Better to be safe than sorry