Lactose-free products

Lactose is a milk sugar (carbohydrate) which is contained in cow milk, human milk, and formula milk; less amount of lactose is contained in the fermented milk products.

Lactose is widely used in the food industry, in particular, for manufacturing of baby foods, tinned milk, deserts, and condensed milk; in the confectionary industry for production of sweets, table jelly, biscuits, fruit spreads, bitter chocolate, marmalade, cookies, different syrups, etc.; in the bread making; in production of meat and sausage products (it improves colourfastness of products); it is an ingredient of many food flavourings and taste modifiers. It is used for manufacturing of diet products for sportsmen and persons with diabetes.

Lactose is used in the pharmaceutical industry as an adhesive and filling agent for production of many medicines and vitamins.

Lactose is useful and necessary for body as far as it improves calcium metabolism of the body and supports soaking of other minerals in the intestine, it also preserves regular bacterial population of the intestine, supporting growth of the good lactic acid bacteria. But lactose may benefit only if it is digested properly. The lactase enzyme secreted by the human body is necessary to digest it. This enzyme cleaves the lactose molecule into its two subunits, the simple sugars glucose and galactose, which can be absorbed. Unfortunately, not all people can digest lactose well.

Some people are lactose intolerant and they feel discomfort after drinking milk and eating other products containing lactose. It is caused by reduced secretion of lactase enzyme in the intestine or by its insufficient activity. Lactase is an enzyme that breaks lactose down in the body, its deficit (lactase deficiency) in the body causes lactose malabsorption and intolerance to products containing milk sugar (lactose intolerance).

There are different reasons for lactase deficiency which causes inability to break down lactose delivered to the body with food products.

The lactase decreased activity may be genetic one and inherited if it is a hereditary or family lactase deficiency.  In most mammals, and the human being in particular, the production of lactase gradually decreases with maturity. For example, the human lactase activity decreases at the end of the first year of life, and such process becomes more and more intensive within the 3rd – 5th years of life. It is so called primary lactase deficiency. Secondary lactase deficiency may be caused by external factors like food allergy (including cow milk protein allergy), intestinal infection or lack of treatment of celiac disease. In such a case, if there is no affecter the intestinal villi restore and the ability to secrete lactase restores too.