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Comment by relyks | Hacker News Reader

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

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> 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?

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 :)

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..

Fairlife brand lactose brand milk claims that they are able to do it.

https://patents.google.com/patent/US7829130B2/en via https://www.reddit.com/r/chemistry/comments/1claif5/getting_...

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.

They remove a part of the lactose first, then add lactase. It's not as sweet anymore then.

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.

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 :)

So it's possible. Thank for pointing out.

Well yeah it tastes like they dumped a bunch of sugar because that's basically what they did.

The enzymes take 1 sugar (lactose) and break it down into 2 sugars (glucose and galactose).

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 :(

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.

Is the water usage of milk substitutes worse than raising cows for milk? It's no use comparing almonds to some other crop.

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.

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. :)

Just a sample what has been corrected by law:

https://kstawinska.medium.com/7-harmful-chemicals-in-vegan-m...

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 :)

> 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.

Do lactase pills cause sugar spiking in diabetics? I think I've seen something like that in my lactose intolerant diabetic (tyle 2) family memeber.

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.

the lactose is converted in glucose, so probably yes, but it depends on the original quantity of lactose

Lactase splits the lactose into glucose and galactose, so they would get more fast sugars and would need to consider that in their sugar intake.

> Better to be safe than sorry

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!

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