Mönchengladbach – There is currently a press release from the KKH that the number of insured persons with lactose intolerance has increased drastically in recent years.
From the point of view of the DAAB, the one-sided focus on lactose as the cause of abdominal complaints is too short-sighted. There are no more or fewer people today who can react to the consumption of lactose due to genetic factors. Because the willingness whether lactose cannot be optimally metabolized is determined in the genes. It is also a fact that not every person who, due to their genetics, shows a decreasing ability to break down lactose over the course of their life, has complaints when consuming lactose – current studies prove this.
The question of the cause of this clearly increasing “perceived” lactose intolerance is all the more urgent! Here it is worth thinking outside the box.
Because it cannot be due to the consumption of milk and dairy products (cream, sour cream, quark, cheese). The consumption figures have been stable for years. This applies both to the per capita consumption of drinking milk and to mixed milk products.
BUT the cause could lie in the dry milk products, which are suspected to be a contributing factor in many turbulences in the intestine and are increasingly being added to dairy products.
From the point of view of food technology and nutritional therapy, it is therefore worth taking a look at the list of ingredients, even with little processed milk products. After all, anyone who looks carefully through the supermarket shelves has noticed for years that the carbohydrate content (e.g. lactose) in dairy products has steadily increased. A development that has very unfavorable effects – because an ordinary low-fat natural mild yoghurt today has up to 8.0g of carbohydrates per 100g – even though the milk as the starting product only has 4.2g. The result is the same everywhere: a milk product today almost always contains significantly more milk sugar per 100g than in the past. In other words, the consumer usually unknowingly consumes more lactose.
In addition, so-called milk derivatives are used. These dried milk products are increasingly being used as a sugar substitute, suggesting to consumers a “healthy” alternative to other sweeteners. Terms for such hidden sugar ingredients via lactose are: whey powder, sweet whey powder or skimmed milk powder. This quickly creates very high amounts of lactose that the intestines simply cannot cope with. It is not necessarily a disease, but rather an eating error that needs to be corrected. In addition, the products contain additional sugar alcohols such as sorbitol, maltitol, etc., which have been shown to cause abdominal discomfort.
In short: In our opinion, just looking at the supposedly increasing numbers of lactose intolerance is too short-sighted. The DAAB would like to see the bigger picture here before making strict dietary recommendations or recommendations for substitute products, which have been shown to have disadvantages and are not always sensible for those affected. Rather, the individual consideration and an individual nutritional therapy makes more sense.
Appropriate nutritionists can be found at www.allergie-wegweiser.de