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Still Great News from Planet LactoseUpdated October 29, 1998Over to The Latest Lactose NewsCATSIP: THE WEIRDEST PRODUCT EVER?
So what makes it different from regular Lactaid milk? Well, it contains
the amino acid, taurine. Cats need it for the health of their
hearts and eyes. Its not in ordinary milk.
If you want more info, go to the
AkPharma site. (They're the parent company of Lactaid.)
THE CASE OF THE MISSING LACTAID DROPS
Don't panic. The people at Lactaid attribute the disappearance
to a "backorder" problem. They say that the drops are back in the
distribution channels and should be on shelves everywhere shortly.
And these are the same drops as always; nothing has been changed.
If you have questions about Lactaid products, want to order them
directly, or want to respond to a special promotion, call Lactaid
at 1-800-LACTAID. That's 1-800-522-8243.
Pacific Foods: Original (soy) Unsweetened, Select (soy), and Multigrain Vitasoy: Creamy Original and Light Original West Soy: Low-Fat Soy Drink
Rice Dream: Original Organic Vitasoy: Light Original Westbrae: Natural Rice Enriched
Pacific Foods: Original (soy) Unsweetened
Health Valley: Fat-Free Soy Moo Pacific Foods: Multigrain Rice Dream: Original Organic Vitasoy: Light Original Westbrae: Natural Rice Enriched West Soy: Low-Fat Soy Drink White Wave Silk (soy) Beverage
Westbrae: Natural Rice Enriched White Wave Silk (soy) Beverage Please remember, these are the opinions of only eight people. Use them as guidelines only. And be sure to check out that June 1998 issue if you want more details.
WARNING FROM THE CULTURE WARS
That's fine for people who are Lactose Intolerant as well. Just be sure that the pills you take are themselves non-dairy. Case in point. Ethical Ingredients makes two lines of such pills. The DF series, MaxiDophilus DF, for example, is as Dairy Free as the DF promises. But the rest of their products, without the DF, use whey, milk solids, or lactose as a base. Needless to say, if you are sensitive to lactose you should not be using these pills. Remember, always, always, no matter what the product, always read the ingredients list.
Glenn Foods (181 S. Franklin St., Valley Stream, NY 11582) makes a
line of pareve chocolate bars. Pareve foods have undergone
certification that insures that they are so completely dairy-free
that even the most milk-allergic person can eat them. (Also see Kosher
Foods Are Big below.)
Their Glenny's Fudge; Chocolate Crunch (low fat); Chocolate Crunch
Almond; and Chocolate Crunch Peanut all carry the pareve labeling.
If you're Lactose Intolerant but not milk-allergic you can also look
for others of their candy bars, which contain no milk products in
their ingredients lists, but do not have the pareve label.
And if you want pure, plain, non-dairy chocolate, don't forget to
look on my Web Food Sites You'll Like
page in my Product Clearinghouse in my
Non-Dairy section.
So? So listen to what Bernstein says. "Every generation has its
disease. The popular disease of the 90's is lactose intolerance.
Once you'd never heard of it, but now everybody has it. Kosher is
good for lactose intolerance."
What this means in practice is that many more foods, and not just
from firms that traditionally aimed at the kosher market, will bear
kosher labeling. And that's good news.
All foods aimed at the kosher market fall into three separate
categories: those containing meat, those containing milk, and those
containing neither: parve (or pareve) foods. Parve foods must be
completely free of any taint of dairy. They cannot even be made on
the same production line as dairy-containing foods. This means that
parve foods are so guaranteed milk-free that even people with severe
milk allergies can feel safe with them.
Warning! Kosher is not the same thing as parve. Foods that are
parve will say parve (or pareve) on the front of the label.
Foods that have milk
products will indicate that with a "D" or "DE" following the kosher
symbol. Kosher foods that contain meat, by the way, cannot be
labeled parve, but they will also be completely milk-free.
So look for the parve label. It's good for you.
The readers of Vegetarian Journal
have selected their choices for the best vegetarian restaurants in
the U.S. Their selections are:
Want more? Vegetarian Journal's Guide to Natural Foods Restaurants
is available for $14 (which includes postage) from:
Quin-Tron even makes the kits that the lab people use to test you
with. I have one that contains a little bottle of 25 grams of lactose,
plus instructions for running the test.
The Quin-Tron site can be found at
www.quintron-usa.com.
Most of it is technical info about their various machines, but if
you look in their Clinical section, you'll find a page called "Genetics
and Milk Digestion?" which has a nice discussion of the history of milk
tolerance and a few lines on how and why their test works.
But basically, I'm mentioning this because it just goes to prove once
again that you can find things on the net that you would never know
where to search for in the paper world.
Morningstar is the licensee for making Lactaid milk in the western
half of the country. It also purchased Presto Foods a couple of
years ago, thereby making it the manufacturer of Mocha Mix, the
refrigerated nondairy milk substitute, which is also only available
in the west.
(Mocha Mix frozen dessert products, however, are manufactured and
distributed by Dreyer's Ice Cream, again only in the midwest and
west. Convolutions within convolutions.)
Suiza is already the owner of Garelick Farms, which distributes a
line of lactose-reduced milks in the Boston area. So although no
official announcements were made, this new acquisition might mean
more and better distribution of reduced-lactose and nondairy products
across the country.
WHO BUYS WHOLESALE LACTOSE? AND OTHER CONUNDRUMS
Ever wondered what lies at lactose.com or the equally intriguing lactoseintolerance.com? Well, not much.
According to the InterNIC Search service, lactose.com is owned by Lactose Wholesale, of Austin, Texas. Not a place we'd probably want to visit, since we're trying to avoid lactose in wholesale quantities, but it doesn't seem to make a big difference in any case. I get a "can't find domain name" error whenever I try to visit it. Lactoseintolerance.com isn't much better. That's registered to Raya Systems of Mountain View, California. They are a health care company that manufactures software, they say. They make Super Nintendo games for children with asthma, diabetes, etc., to help families manage health care through educating children via computer games. They wanted the domain name in case they decide to work in that area. Mysteries and disappointments. That's the Web for you.
LACTOSE INTOLERANCE, A NEW SYMPTOM
A note from Vol. 113, No. 4 of theInternational Archives of Allergy and Immunology.
"The primary acquired lactase deficiency of the adult is known to cause various disturbances in the gastrointestinal tract while extraintestinal symptoms are unusual. Here we report on a histologically proven chronic eczema requiring corticosteroid treatment for several months. It was obviously induced by a concomitant lactose intolerance since the introduction of a lactose-free diet led to a complete disappearance of the eczema and allowed the discontinuation of the corticosteroid treatment. As far as we know, this is the first case report of an eczema caused by a lactose intolerance."
A LACTOSE-FREE ALTERNATIVE FOR BABIES
Adding lactase to milk isn't the only way to free it of lactose.
Mead Johnson & Company, headquartered in Evansville, Indiana, developed a
mechanical process to remove the lactose from milk to manufacture
Lactofree. If you need an alternative to soy formula for infants who
do not have an allergy to milk, this is what Mead Johnson
has to say:
"Lactofree is a milk-based, lactose-free formula that provides the benefits of milk protein without the feeding problems sometimes associated with lactose. Lactofree is designed for babies with common feeding problems (such as fussiness, crying, gas, diarrhea) when due to lactose sensitivity. It is appropriate for everyday feeding for the first full year and beyond. Lactofree has a similar appearance, color, and odor as other milk-based formulas and is priced comparably as well in most areas. Lactofree is available in 14 oz Powder, 13 oz Concentrated Liquid and 32 oz Ready-To-Use forms. Nursettes (3 oz Ready-To-Use glass bottles and 8 oz pop-top cans) can be purchased by calling 1-800-BABY 123. "To help us provide the kind of information you want, please send your questions and suggestions to Mead Johnson. If your question isn't answered, you can receive a personal response by calling our infant formula toll-free number (1-800-222-9123) or our adult nutritional products toll-free number (1-800-247-7893) 8am - 4:30pm, central time, weekdays." Go find them at www.meadjohnson.com
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Those geniuses at Lactaid must have been sniffing the fumes at
the lactase plant. (Extremely pungent: I've been there.)
They've just come out with
CatSip, a lactose-free milk for cats!
First they dwindled away, then they disappeared altogether.
"What was happening to the rare and precious supply of Lactaid drops?"
questioned people used to making their own lactose-reduced milk
at home.
Many firms offer acidophilus and lactobacillus bacteria cultures in
pill form, on the theory that these cultures are better for your
colon and your health in general.
Richard A. Bernstein just paid $125 million to buy the B.
Manischewitz Co., one of the largest makers of kosher foods in the
country.