What Are the Best cheeses for the Lactose Intolerant?

If you are lactose intolerant you are that person who gets bloating, the runs and or cramps when they consume lactose and then your body can’t break it down. Lactose is the natural sugar present in milk and lactose when consumed is broken down by the lactose enzyme. If you are one of the millions of people who can’t tolerate and digest lactose it goes right to your large intestine and then turns into something that bacteria just loves. This is not an allergy to milk which is something different.

Different types of cheeses have different levels of lactose. There are some that have only trace levels of lactose and there are others that have quite a lot of lactose in them. The cheeses that have a small or trace amount of lactose are the ones that someone who is lactose intolerant may be able to eat. These are the ones such as parmesan, cheddar or Swiss which are naturally aged generally have less than 0.5 grams of lactose. Then during the processing most of the lactose is drained off with the remaining changing to lactic acid during the aging process. So this is the type of cheeses someone who is lactose intolerant may be able to consume without some bad reactions.

Generally if a cheese label says the sugar content is zero then there will be approximately one half gram per ounce of lactose in it. There are some brands of processed cheese that are actually lactose free too. The ones which have less than five grams of lactose are generally the ones that are not aged such as the fresh and not ripened ones like mozzarella or ricotta which contain more lactose than the aged cheeses.

The alternate is choosing ones that are created from soy beans or almonds. Soy cheeses will taste slightly nutty and also may be slightly sweet like a soy mozzarella. So someone who is lactose intolerant may in fact be able to consume specific ones. If in doubt as to how much lactose is in the product you must read the entire label. If there are any questions then you can always contact the maker of the product either by telephone or they may have an email address on the packaging. Because so many millions of people have a lactose intolerance it is a condition that is widely talked about and acknowledged so there are choices available.