KAWEEWUTHISINP !

Tanakom Gun Kaweewuthisinp

Ms. Orana Meenongwha

English 10/10:04

May 25, 2017

Issues of Lactose-Free Milk

Introduction

Milk is one of the simplest food with high nutrients and energy. Diary milk or cow's

milk is the product from the cow that is well-known and drunk by people all over the world.

Drinking milk can give tons of energy because milk contains sugars and proteins. The main

nutrients in milk are water, fat, proteins, lactose and minerals. There are some minor substances

that contained in milk which are pigments, enzymes, vitamins, phospholipid, and gasses. (THE

CHEMISTRY OF MILK, n.d.) Nowadays, milk industry hires scientists, nutritionists, nano

engineers, and a lot more people who have the knowledge about making new useful and eatable

products for the community. They have introduced several new specialized milk products for

groups of people who need specific nutrients from milk. Some people who want to build their

muscles up quickly choose to drink whey milk or whey protein. Whey protein is used for

improving athletic performance and an alternative milk for people with lactose intolerance.

Some people are allergic to lactose, which is sugar in dairy milk, so lactose-free milk is a good

choice for this group of people. It has been designed and sold for lactose intolerance patients.

Lactose is a sugar in milk. One of the sugar properties is sweetness. The sweetness is

ordered from highest to lowest, fructose, sucrose, glucose, galactose, maltose, and lactose,
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respectively. Lactose is obviously the sugar with the lowest sweetness. Lactose is normally

digested by the enzyme called lactase in the small intestine. However, there is a group of people

who can produce just a small amount of lactase. Scientists and medical doctors call these people,

lactose intolerance patients. These patients cannot drink normal diary milk and milk-based

products. There are several ways to test for lactose intolerance syndrome which is hydrogen

breath test, blood test, genetic test, intestinal biopsy, stool acidity test (Bennington-Castro, 2014)

This syndrome can be passed through genetics, so if parents have it, then their children also have

a greater chance to have it than normal people whose parents do not have it. Lactose-free milk is

one of the new interesting and useful food which gives patients an opportunity to consume

products as normal people have. This research paper aims to provide information about

alternative products like lactose-free milk that are lately produced and urge lactose intolerance

patients about lactose-free products that can be one of their protein alternatives. Besides lactose-

free milk, this study suggests other kinds of food that are interested by a large group of scientists

and have a better chance to be done as well as lactose-free milk.

Lactose and Lactase

Lactose intolerance can affect differently on people. The majority of people with this

syndrome can eat, drink or take dairy products without any problems. In some cases, patient's

small intestine cannot produce lactase, which leads to short-term illnesses such as stomach flu or

cystic fibrosis when the illness is not cured for a long time. Stomach flu or gastroenteritis is

inflammation of the stomach and intestine, which has viruses, bacteria, or pancreatic infection as

the main infectious agents. The symptoms are vomiting, diarrhea, fever, nausea, abdominal

cramps, and weight loss. However, as mentioned, this illness is a short-term illness which
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normally can be cured by the body's immune system within one to two days (Thompson &

Hahn, 2015). Another illness which is led by lactose intolerance is cystic fibrosis. This illness is

a lot worse than stomach flu because it cannot be cured. The patient's mucus turns to be thicker

and stickier than it should be. Normally, mucus is the sticky fluid which has a function to protect

organs from the extreme environment such as the acidic or basic environment. People might

think that it is an advantage to have thicker and stickier mucus, but actually, it is a disadvantage

because the abnormal mucus in the lung would block the airways and stop the air from moving

through the lung. The patient will have a problem breathing. In the pancreas, the mucus would

block the way the digestive system work and increase the chance to get infected by other viruses

and bacteria. It can be explained by relying on the truth that acid can kill micro-biome. The

thicker and stickier than normal mucus block those harmful virii. As a result, those viruses

started to grow up and reproduce very fast. This leads to several diseases. This is not the only

disadvantage of the abnormal mucus in the pancreas. In young age patients such as babies and

children, they couldn't absorb nutrients because of the same reason as mentioned why the

abnormal mucus leads to the infection in the digestive system (Pope & McColley, 2015). In

some rare cases, premature could temporary have lactose intolerance syndrome, and the

syndrome might go away when they grow up. However, some people have this digestive

disorder for their whole lives.

Everyone who has this syndrome would notice since he or she was young because there

are a lot of symptoms that obviously show the disorder such as bloating, cramps, gurgling or

rumbling sounds in the belly, gas, diarrhea, and vomiting (Lactose Intolerance - Topic Overview,

n.d.). Patients may be diagnosed by observing a number of dairy products consumed. Having

illnesses every time after taking dairy products is one of the most obvious ways to notice
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whether the patients have this syndrome or not. When patients go to see their doctors, the

doctors might ask them to stop consuming products from milk and see whether their symptoms

go away or not. The doctors may run a few tests to make sure that those symptoms actually

occur because of this syndrome or by other diseases. In some cases, patients are sick after

drinking milk but they never have any troubles drinking milk before. This always happens in

older patients because they could not produce lactase anymore.

Nowadays, doctors still cannot find a way to cure lactose intolerance. They can only tell

their patients to avoid consuming milk products or taking the substitution of milk such as soy

milk instead. However, there are some nutrients in dairy milk that cannot be found in those

substitutions such as calcium which is very important in children and teenagers. Some people

decided to get calcium from other products such as broccoli, almond, and salmon but some

decided to get those nutrients from lactose-free milk instead. It is still arguable whether lactose-

free milk and reduced-lactose milk are the best way to get all other important nutrients in milk

without lactose or not.

Lactose-Free Milk and Symptoms of Lactose Intolerance

There are several sources of lactose-free product in nature, e.g. yogurt, kefir, and aged

cheese. Yogurt has beneficial bacteria which help to digest lactose, so most lactose intolerance

patients can take yogurt. Kefir, the drinkable yogurt with more probiotics, can be also taken by

people with lactose intolerance. The more probiotics, the better digestion will happen. Aged

cheese, the hard cheese, is another alternative way of eating cheese without taking lactose.

Normally, lactose will take places where are moist and liquid. Aged cheese has almost no liquid,

so there is very low or non chance of having lactose (Winslow, 2011). For a past few years,
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scientists came up with lactose-free milk which is directly designed for lactose intolerance

patients. About 65 percent of the human population including 90 percent of adults is having

lactose intolerance. The majority of adults have this syndrome because when human's age is

increased, their organs which produce each enzyme cannot work as good as when they are

young. Another reason is because the enzyme is reusable, so the same enzyme that was released

before cannot work as effective as it used to do. However, some patients can drink skim milk as

well because the process to make these two types of milk is very similar. Membrane

fractionation process is a process that is used remove lactose as well as sodium from milk. The

difference is 90 to 95 percent of lactose in skim milk and reduced-lactose milk has been

removed, while at least 99.5 percent of lactose must be removed in order to be legally labeled as

lactose-free milk (Clemson University, n.d.). In addition, it is no need to make yogurt from

lactose-free milk because it is already pre-digested by bacteria in it.

Rather than lactose-free milk, enzyme supplement is another suggestion from

professions. Its function is simply to replace the enzyme that patient lacks. In this case, lactase

enzyme is being replaced, so patients can convert lactose into glucose and galactose. The

enzyme supplement comes in the capsule form which can be taken approximately 1 to 2 capsules

per main meals. Some do not have to take any for light meal and snack, while some have to take

one. Moreover, the patients have to try the doses of the medicine themselves in order to make

sure that which amount of capsules they have to consume per meal. In each person, the

requirement of enzyme supplement is different because some can produce a few lactase by

themselves while some couldn't. However, the appropriate time to take the capsules is 30

minutes before the meal. When there is no more symptoms occurred, that amount of tabs is

suitable for the patient (Gerstmar, n.d.). To sum up, people with lactose intolerance syndrome
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have choices to get protein from natural or man-made sources. Both ways have been proven to

be harmless. However, some companies do not take the ethics as their first priority, but they take

money instead.

Business Trend of Lactose-Free Milk

Nowadays, food companies are trying to come up with new products that might be able to

make tons of money from the consumers. A company without creativity cannot survive from the

modern world. More people are opening their own companies which increase the competitive

rate. The majority of the junior companies is dealing with food. There is an idea of selling

important products and customers will buy the products without advertisement. This idea is true

for the company owners who just want to have some money, but it is not true for who want to

become a millionaire. One of the main factors of becoming a successful company is selling new

products. Selling unique products increase a chance of success. It is the nature of the company

that is trying to gain as much profit as possible. Therefore, they would increase the price to the

maximum point where people will still buy it. For example, a company in New Zealand comes

up with new honey products with numbers to tell a quality of it. They classified their products

into different classes by using the UMF numbers which show the antibacterial ability of the

honey. If the honey is 10 UMF or more, it has a health beneficial. The company tries to convince

people to buy their products by providing them the information that is true with the one that is

not hundred percent true. All of the information that they provide has been researched and did

some experiments on it. However, they might use some psychological methods to convince the

sample to tell them the answer that supports their hypothesis on the products. From my point of

view, the company must sell health products with the affordable price because of the ethical
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reasons unless the patients would get protein deficiency. Protein deficiency is a symptom when a

person lacks protein. Some effects of the symptom are skin and nail alternation, hair loss,

infection because of the weakened immune system and Gastrointestinal Distress. These will

occur when the amount of protein in the blood is not enough to be transformed to produce

specific types of protein such as white blood cells, enzymes, and keratin (Wickham, 2015).

Unfortunately, no one can make any changes on what's happening because everything in this

century is all about business.

Conclusion

To conclude, a big group of the population, especially Asians, are living with lactose

intolerance syndrome. The patients have a hard time consuming with milk because most of the

foods in daily life are made out of dairy milk. Milk is being put as the main ingredient in every

meal. Lots of the patients do not even know that their ability to digest and absorb lactose has

been decreased. They are having a stomach ache after the meal and continue consuming it

without doubts. To avoid the symptom, doctors suggest patients take natural protein sources such

as yogurt, kefir, and aged cheese. A good news has been introduced to them. Scientists finally

finish with their project on creating lactose-free milk. They sell their work to the company which

gives them the most amount of money. Therefore, the companies sell the products with high

price and receiving a lot of dollars. The patients cannot afford their products, so they avoid

consuming dairy milk-based products, resulting in protein deficiency symptom and other protein

related symptoms and diseases. However, the companies should have sold them with lower price

and enable a larger number of people with lactose intolerance to afford their products. To lower

the price, the government should be involved with this problem. With a support from the
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government, the companies may decrease the price of their products and get money from the

government instead. With advanced technology, scientists may be able to come up with new

ingredients which are cheaper and work as good as lactose-free milk that is available today. As a

result of using cheap ingredients as a production cost, everyone will have equal opportunities to

buy and access the products. This means lactose intolerance patients can consume whatever they

want to eat without any health issues.

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References

Bennington-Castro, J. (9 March 2014). Lactose Intolerance Symptoms Retrieved from

http://www.everydayhealth.com/lactose-intolerance/guide/symptoms/

Clemson University (n.d.). Membrane fractionation processes for removing 90% to 95% of the

lactose and sodium from skim milk and for preparing lactose and sodium-

reduced skim milk. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19021794

Gerstmar, T. (n.d.) Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Digestive Enzymes Retrieved

from http://whole9life.com/2012/09/digestive-enzymes-101/

Lactose Intolerance - Topic Overview (n.d.) Retrieved from

http://www.webmd.com/digestive-disorders/tc/lactose-intolerance-topic-overview#1

Pope, J. & McColley, S. (20 November 2015) Cystic Fibrosis Retrieved from

http://www.webmd.com/hw-popup/cystic-fibrosis

THE CHEMISTRY OF MILK (n.d.) Retrieved from

http://dairyprocessinghandbook.com/chapter/chemistry-milk

Thompson, G. & Hahn, C. (22 May 2015) Stomach Flu (Gastroenteritis) Retrieved from

http://www.webmd.com/hw-popup/stomach-flu-gastroenteritis

Wickham, E. (18 February 2015) Sign of Low Protein Intake Retrieved from

http://www.livestrong.com/article/427967-signs-of-low-protein-intake/
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Appendix