Goat Cheese Good for Lactose Intolerance
POSTED ON APRIL 14, 2010 IN ALLERGY-FREE FOODS, KIDS, LIVING NATURALLY, MISC., NUTRITION IN THE NEWS, RECOMMENDED PRODUCTS, WEIGHT LOSS | 5135 VIEWS | 24 RESPONSES
I wasn’t surprised when I noticed that I had become lactose-intolerant when I was 21. After all, my sister had been lactose-intolerant since birth and my mother had been off of milk since she made the connection in her years ago that milk products made her quite uncomfortable.
Bloating, gassiness, explosive diarreah, constipation, headache… these can all be symptoms of lactose intolerance, particularly if they show up within 1- 12 hours of ingesting a dairy product.
Lactose intolerance is not fun, to say the least.
It’s particularly common among Mediterranean, Asian, African and other dark-skinned people, but can affect almost anyone.
It’s worth noting that mammals didn’t evolve to digest dairy products after weaning, and the human mammal is the only one to continue to drink milk as an adult. Really, lactose intolerance should be no surprise to any of us.
Still, life without cheese makes me feel deprived. Evolution didn’t account for the development of cheese.
Most lactose intolerant people simply avoid dairy products whenever possible.
We can also take the lactase enzyme to help digest milk products on a food-by-food basis, but for me, even though lactase will ease the discomfort of digestion, I don’t believe it does everything it needs to because I notice a direct correlation between when I consume cow’s milk products and weight gain in my own body.
Not so with goat milk products. Go figure.
Although goat’s milk has only slightly less lactose then cow’s milk (4.1% to 4.7%), something is different enough that many lactose-intolerant people don’t have a problem digesting it. Hooray! This discovery has opened up a whole new world for me and my family because we can have cheese again!
The coolest part is finding how many products are now made with goat milk. Besides the typical soft Chevre log, we’ve found excellent Cheddar, Country Jack, and Mozzarella. Even our local Costco carries slices of unnamed goat cheese. Look for yogurt made from goat’s milk, too.
Colorado alone has more than 50 goat farms, dairies, and creameries. One of my favorites is the Haystack Mountain Goat Dairy — their cheeses are so delicious and special. Here’s a fun article about a program that puts prisoners to work on goat farms and then the goat milk goes to Haystack.
Mt. Sterling Creamery out of Wisconsin has wonderful harder goat cheeses, too.
http://elizabethyarnell.com/effortlesseating/2010/04/goat-cheese-good-for-lactose-intolerance/
***
it’s easy to forget that there’s a good chunk of people out there who can’t eat dairy products. In fact, those people are the norm: Roughly 75 percent of the world’s population has difficulty digesting lactose, the primary sugar in milk. If you’re lactose intolerant, many cheeses may leave you feeling bloated and uncomfortable—or worse.
But there are also certain cheeses that don’t seem to have that effect as much as others (and some have none at all). Which begs the question: If all cheeses are made from milk, why do some cause digestive havoc while others are fairly harmless?
One theory holds that aged cheeses have less lactose and therefore are less likely to induce symptoms. During the cheesemaking process, lactobacilli cultures are introduced to milk, converting the lactose into lactic acid, a substance that is easily digested by all humans. The longer the bacteria are left to do their thing, the lower the amount of lactose in the cheese. Eventually, the lactose levels dip low enough that the cheese can be eaten by someone with lactose intolerance with little or no adverse effects.
Going by this assumption, hard, extra-aged cheeses — your Parmesans, cheddars, and Swiss-style cheeses — are a safe bet if you're lactose intolerant (and as a bonus, aging also brings delicious complexity). Younger, moister, softer cheeses that are aged for only a short amount of time (such as brie), fresh cheeses (like mozzarella and feta), and processed cheeses (hello, Velveeta) have higher levels of lactose, thus they are more likely to produce unpleasant effects.
There is another theory, however, that it’s not the lactose but the fat in cheese that makes certain varieties difficult to digest. The curdling process converts a good deal of milk’s lactose into lactic acid, while whey, the leftover liquid, washes much of the remaining lactose away. Even fresh cheeses contain only a fraction of the lactose that’s present in milk. But cow’s milk does have large, difficult-to-digest fat globules that remain in the cheese, which supposedly are the real source of stomach discomfort. This explains why goat and sheep milk cheeses, which have smaller fat particles, are often easier to digest, despite the fact that the fresh milk from both animals has roughly the same amount of lactose as that from cows.
The bottom line is that tolerance for lactose and different cheeses varies from person to person, and depends on the activity level of your stomach's lactase (the enzyme responsible for lactose digestion). If you are lactose intolerant and want to get into cheese, try starting off with small amounts of hard, goat, or sheep cheeses and start exploring from there.
***
Lactose intolerance should not be confused with milk allergy where people are allergic to the protein in different types of milk. This is more common with cow's milk and may explain why some tolerate goat's milk better.
Lactose is only found in milk made by mammals (as opposed to milk from nuts or soy). It is a two molecule sugar (called a disaccharide) made up of one molecule glucose and one molecule galactose. The body produces an enzyme called lactase that breaks the bond between these two saccharides so that the body can absorb them from the intestine. Many people will lose the ability to make this enzyme and because the lactose can't be split it passes into the large intestine. The result can be gas, pain, bloating and diarrhea.
Goat's milk does contain lactose and it has almost as much as cow's milk. Cheeses made from both cow's milk and goat's milk will have a reduction in the amount of lactose due to the fermentation process. For this reason many people who are lactose intolerant are able to eat cheeses. Some people do tolerate goat cheese better, however. The fat molecules in goat's milk are shorter than in cow's milk and this may account for its easier digestibility for some.
http://www.drgourmet.com/askdrgourmet/goatcheeseallergy.shtml#.WFwcTvB97IU
***
