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Lactose free milk- An innovative invention
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Wednesday, 21 July, 2021, 15 : 00 PM [IST]
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Rhythm Kalsi
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As we all know that, milk is a white or yellowish coloured thick fluid produced from the mammary glands of the mammals. Being the primary source of food and nutrition for young mammals as well as human infants, milk is richest source of calcium which helps in bone development.
But many of us don’t like to drink milk though it is very much tasty as well as nutritious. Sometimes you might have heard people saying that, “we are allergic to milk as it causes bloating, diarrhea and abdominal pain” but have you wondered the reason? If not then, this article will let you learn about the reason behind avoiding milk at the table, difference between lactose free milk (new invention) and regular milk and necessity of having milk into your diet.
Milk is produced from the mammary glands of the mammals such as rats, dogs, cats, cow, monkeys, apes, deer, whales and humans too which is a white coloured thick watery fluid. Milk is the richest source of proteins (casein and whey), vitamins (Vitamin B12 and Vitamin B2), minerals (calcium and phosphorous), water (above 85%), carbohydrates, sugars (lactose), fats (4% to 6%) and fibers. Milk does not contain vitamin C or ascorbic acid, as vitamin C is highly heat unstable and do not retain in milk on heating and also sometimes fortified with vitamin D. Cow milk, buffalo milk and breast milk differ from each other in different manners.
Each one of them has their own health benefits as well as different nutritional profile. Mostly young ones are fed with human breast milk (up to 6 months) and above them can be fed with any of the other 2 milk.
Beside this regular milk do contain lactose, which is a complex milk sugar found in milk, responsible for the fruity flavor of the milk. This sugar present in milk is responsible for the indigestibility of the milk to some people and thus regarded as lactose intolerance.
Generally in a healthy adult, when consumes milk the milk sugar (lactose) gets digested by an enzyme that is “lactase” into digestible sugars in the human body (Suri et al., 2019). Some people lack in this enzyme by birth or sometimes body doesn’t make enough lactase and hence it leads to the indigestibility of the milk. Lactose intolerance is found to increase by age or sometimes it can be due to illness caused by some inflammation in the gut.
This indigestibility leads to bloating, diarrhea, abdominal pain, colonic fermentation (Suri et al., 2019) and vomiting which are non tolerable by a person. To avoid these allergic reactions towards milk and make milk available and palatable to all, lactose free milk is introduced. Lactose free milk is a milk product which contains lactase, the enzyme responsible for breakdown of lactose into simpler sugars such as glucose and galactose (Dekker et al., 2019) which are easily digested by lactose tolerant people.
Sometimes rather having lactose free milk people go for supplements of the enzyme “lactase”. This lactose free milk is similar in texture, flavor and nutrient profile with the basic difference of presence of lactase enzyme in it. Now the question arises, how the milk is made lactose free. Regular milk which is pasteurized is added with the lactase enzyme into it and after the complete mixing of the enzyme with milk, this enzyme breaks down the sugar to simpler sugars and hence makes it digestible.
There is no as such difference between the lactose free milk and regular milk, but it is concluded by researchers that lactose free milk is much more appealing and sweeter than normal regular milk. The nutritional analysis of both types of milk is found to be same and it is now proven that anyone can consume lactose free milk irrespective of the intolerant disorder.
Milk is a white coloured thick liquid dairy product which is produced from mammary glands of mammals. As far as the concern of lactose intolerance is associated, lactose free milk is being introduced so as to deal with digestive problems of gastric, bloating, vomiting and diarrhea on consumption of milk due to absence of or insufficient production of lactase enzyme in human body. It is therefore concluded that regular milk and lactose free milk are similar in all aspects but lactose free milk serve great advantage for those who cannot digest lactose. More and more emphasis must be given on this so as to combat lactose intolerance in people.
(The author is M.Sc. student, Department of Food Technology and Nutrition, School of Agriculture, Lovely Professional University, Jalandhar. She can be reached at
Rhythmkalsk@gmail.com)
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