How bad is lactose intolerance really? Not that bad, right? Well, it depends… For me, it really, really sucks, but let’s start with the basics:
The types of suffering
There are different types of lactose intolerance:
- A temporary version, for example after a bad stomach bug, which vanishes over time.
- A genetic defect, which causes severe lactose intolerance starting from the moment you are born. Which means you are not able to process mother’s milk.
- A genetic mutation, which allows you to continue to process lactose after puberty. Without this mutation, you will start to have issues processing lactose starting in your teenager years.
All of this means, there are different types of severities. Most common (most known?) is, when they can still drink a glass of milk, but not more. You know “Big Bang Theory”? Then you probably know Dr. Leonard Hofstadter and you could have noticed that he is lactose intolerant – and doesn’t care too much about it. He is portraited as one of the lucky lactose intolerant people, which should look out for lactose, but if they do not, it is not a real issue. My dad is similar, you just don’t want to be in the same car as him afterwards.
How much lactose is in ...?
But what if you have to look out for it? Let’s have a look a common milk related products and how much lactose they contain:
- milk: 4.7g pro 100 g
- cream: 3.2g pro 100g
- butter: 0.5g pro 100g
- yoghurt: 4g pro 100g
- mozzarella: 1g pro 100g
- Nutella: 1.9g pro 100g
The values depend a bit on the source, for the list above I used famillesuisse.ch as source.
If you follow the link, you will see entries with 0g. Do not, under any circumstances, rely on this and cook for someone with lactose intolerance based on that value! Please ask them first if they can eat that product.
Random definition of lactose-free
The issue lies in the definition of the terms „laktosefrei“ (lactose-free) and „laktosearm“ (low-lactose). I do not know the definition in other countries, however in Switzerland they are (commonly, but not by law) defined as:
- lactose-free: less then 0.1g lactose per 100g or 100ml of the product
- low-lactose: less than 2g per 100g dry weight (don’t ask me, I don’t know how they came up with that definition)
You can also buy lactose-free cowmilk-based yoghurt in the stores. But what does this really mean? It means, they reduced the lactose to max 0.1g per 100g of yoghurt. Fair enough? Not exactly. Think about how much yoghurt you eat for one portion? If you buy it, you get usually 150g cups. This means, one lactose-free yoghurt cup can contain up to 0.15g lactose!
Guess what, this works with cheese too. And I’m from Switzerland, you know, the land of cheese fondue? Where a person is estimated to eat 200-300g of cheese in one evening… Even if it is “lactose-free” by definition, it starts to sum up quite a bit.
Back in the day
Now, back to the original question: How bad is lactose intolerance really?
I am one of the unlucky ones with zero mutations (but at least I do not have the genetic defect). I was diagnosed when I was 16 years old, after many, many years of 2-3 day “stomach bugs” and a lot of discussions with teachers who thought I skipped classes for the joy of sitting on the loo? Oh sorry, let’s get the sarcasm back in the bag!
Even with the diagnosis, it was a long process until we were able to manage our lactose intake. Back then, there was no information about lactose on products. It was a lot of painful trial and error until I had a set of products I could eat – and then there was those times when they changed the receipt without any announcement …
Today, I’m a lot better. There is the aha! line in Migros, and freefrom in coop. It helps a lot! Remember the yoghurt example? I was never able to eat 150g in one day. That was part of the reason why I always thought my tolerance limit would be around 0.1g of lactose per day. Oh boy was I wrong!
How I found my limit
A few days ago, I tried to take a pill with lactose in it. Why the heck did I do that? Because there are 6 different pills (from different manufactures) with the same substance, but none of them are without lactose! My doctor researched the different amounts of lactose and I decided it was worth to try the one with the lowest lactose amount: 48mg per pill.
Should work right? I mean, it is half as much as in the “lactose-free” definition.
Want to know how it went? Epic failure! A few minutes after I swallowed the pill, I started to have the „gut feeling“ of too much lactose. And it didn’t take long until the horror of lactose intolerance symptoms started. For me, this means horrible bowel cramps with bad diarrhea, dehydration and drop in blood pressure if I’m not able to drink enough – which can be really difficult when having bowel cramps.
Conclusion: It can be really bad!
So, the end of the story was: Now I know my tolerance limit is somewhere below 48mg!
In theory, this would mean I am not able to drink even 1ml of milk! In practice, there are some other factors which probably would allow me to drink 1ml of milk, but honestly, I’m not that curious to try and find out.
Anyway, I think this answered the original question pretty well: lactose intolerance can be really, really bad. Mine, at least, is a constant issue! You could ask my boyfriend, he is still amazed where you can find lactose. Let me shock you one last time, with my favorite “Why did they do that?!” products:
As a good Swiss person, I have Aromat in the kitchen, right? Guess again, it contains lactose! But surely, I don’t have to be afraid of Maizena, right? Well, lactose is on the ingredients list… And with that, I have lost any and all interest in ever eating in a restaurant again.