Lactose ice cream, cream or condensed milk are particularly lactose-rich

Some people are sensitive to lactose. They complain of abdominal pain, bloating and nausea. But there are dairy products that contain less lactose. So sufferers do not have to give up all milk products. Milk sugar is already reduced in some dairy products.

Lactose-free foods are trendy. Manufacturers and traders offer a growing range of milk and dairy products from which lactose has been removed. This is helpful for many people. But how does a product become lactose-free and is the product still of equal quality? The technology behind lactose-free foods is explained by TÜV SÜD's food experts.

There is a lot of cactose in these dairy products. Image: Gerhard Seybert - fotolia

According to the experts, ice cream, cream, condensed milk and milk chocolate are particularly lactose-rich. Hard cheese, on the other hand, hardly contains lactose after the longer ripening process. Even in some acidified milk products such as yoghurt and quark, some of the milk sugar is already broken down.

Many manufacturers have set up their offer among those consumers who want to do without lactose. A food may be declared lactose-free if it has less than 0.1 g of lactose in 100 g of food. By an additional processing step during production, the lactose is degraded in the product. For this purpose, normal dairy cows milk is mixed with the cleaving enzyme lactase, which is obtained from yeasts or mold fungi. Lactose is degraded in this way already in the dairy to glucose and galactose.

Since the glucose and galactose taste sweeter than lactose, the lactose-free milk tastes slightly sweetish. By heating, the enzyme is subsequently deactivated and the milk is pasteurized at the same time. Other methods isolate lactose with the help of special membrane filters from the milk. The then lactose-free milk is a raw material for lactose-free products, such as yoghurt, quark or mozzarella. "The valuable constituents of milk, such as calcium and milk protein, remain unaffected by this technological processing," assures Dr. med. Andreas Daxenberger, food expert at TÜV SÜD.

It is also important for consumers that not all natural dairy products contain the same amount of lactose. 100 ml of drinking milk contains about 5 g of lactose. In acidified milk products such as yoghurt, buttermilk or cottage cheese, bacteria largely decompose the milk sugar themselves during the ripening process. Although they still contain 3 g to 6 g per 100 g of lactose, they are often well tolerated in small amounts. In hard cheese, the lactose content at the end of the ripening process is already below 0.1 g / 100g. Butter contains on average only about 0,7g lactose / 100g. Ice cream, cream, condensed milk and milk chocolate, on the other hand, are usually very lactose-rich. The tolerance limits for lactose are very different, even with intolerances from person to person.

Frequently, even sensitive consumers are unaware that lactose-containing milk powder and sweet whey powder are sometimes found on the list of ingredients of sausage, baked goods or pesto. A declaration "lactose-free" may therefore make sense here because the consumer would normally expect no lactose in these products.