Over my two decades or more of experience speaking to people about goat milk, I have learned that there are many misconceptions and beliefs about lactose intolerance.
Whenever I hear someone use this term or refer to themselves as lactose intolerant, my mind instantly goes to a memory of a movie clip. The movie is a 1995 film French Kiss. The scene is Meg Ryan playing a woman who flies to France to confront her straying fiancé. She is on a train enjoying the beautiful French countryside and a plate of exquisite French cheeses. As time passes, the effect of the cheese kicks in and after describing her unpleasant digestive symptoms, she screams, “Lactose intolerance!”. It is a humourous scene that clearly made an impact on me and no doubt, on to others.
It is stories like this that bring misinformation to those who struggle with consuming dairy. I have spoken with so many people who have challenges digesting dairy. If this is you, I feel you as I too have challenges digesting dairy.
These challenges are often lumped into one category, Lactose Intolerance.
But is this really true??
Lactose intolerance is the inability to properly digest lactose.
There is also the inability to digest dairy products in general. I have personally discovered that there is also an intolerance for cow dairy products and/or sheep and/or goat dairy.
There is ONE myth that I hear over and over again about goat milk. Some companies even use it in their marketing.
This myth is:
Goat milk does not contain lactose!
If you ever see lactose free on a goat dairy product, this could be false advertising. In Canada, a product labeled “Lactose Free” most have the testing and proof to back that claim up.
I can tell you with 100% certainty that goat milk absolutely contains lactose. Lactose is milk sugar.
For your reference, anything with the ending ‘-ose’ is a sugar. Glucose. Fructose. Sucrose. Galactose. Maltose. Lactose. These are all sugars and lactose is milk sugar.
ALL milk contains lactose no matter what species it comes from.
To be clear, almond, soy, coconut or any other plant “milk” are not milks at all. These are processed beverages that come with their own challenges, often including sugars and other added ingredients, that I know I do not want to include in my diet.
Cow milk, goat milk, sheep milk, all milk, contain lactose.
My husband Will is lactose intolerant. His symptoms are not at all similar to what Meg Ryan experienced on that train in France. His biggest symptom is joint pain. Inflammation of his joints that creeps up within hours or sometimes not until the next day. Sometimes the inflammation is so bad he cannot bend his fingers. As a teenager, Will was SKINNY! He still is relatively thin now and back in high school, he was a bone rack. During University, Will stopped drinking milk as it was a luxury a student on a budget did not spend money on. Miraculously, he started putting on weight.
Today, Will consumes lots of different dairy products. How is this possible when he is lactose intolerant?
It is possible because of the natural processes of creating dairy products.
IF dairy products are made in the traditional way, beneficial microbes breakdown the lactose into lactic acid, glucose and galactose. Glucose and galactose are simple sugars that the body can easily digest.
Will, who is lactose intolerant, can eat any and all dairy products including artisan cheeses, yogurt, and kefir as long as they are properly fermented during the make process. He can consume cow, goat and sheep cheeses.
Will CANNOT drink milk from any species. Even goat which is the easiest to digest (in my opinion) he cannot drink without side effects.
One challenge with the dairy industry is that financial margins are small. For this reason, many of the big dairy processors wish to speed up the process of cheesemaking and have shorter fermentation times. Microbes simply do not have time to complete their work and much of the lactose is not broken down during the cheesemaking process. Have you noticed the extensive ingredient list on some yogurts out there? In some cases, these extra ingredients make up for a proper fermentation time and the result is yogurt with lactose still present.
This is why at River’s Edge Goat Dairy, we properly ferment all our dairy products. (with the exception of milk of course, which is not fermented at all) If we didn’t, Will would not be able to consume them and neither would many of you.
Over the years we have met many people who have similar digestive issues with lactose as Will does.
We have even more clients like myself, who are challenged with dairy and are NOT lactose intolerant.
I do not digest dairy well, any dairy products, with the exception of goat dairy. I can happily consume any and all goat dairy. Which is why I milk goats.
Cow dairy is an out for me. So is sheep dairy.
I remember not enjoying cow milk as a child. I could never explain it as there wasn’t much talk of food intolerances in the 80s. I remember my grandmother had goat milk on occasion that she purchased at the Hamilton Framers Market, no doubt “under the radar” of the local Health Unit. This milk was sweet and delicious, and it left me feeling great! I would go home and tell my mom that I wanted goat milk. She would laugh at me lovingly and we always looked for goat milk in the grocery store with no luck.
This is the reason the milk we produce tastes as good as it does.
If I had not experienced that sweet, delicious goat milk as a child, I would think that all goat milk tastes as it does from the grocery store. Awful. (again, my opinion) Thankfully I had this experience as a child and as a result, I knew it was possible to produce beautiful, sweet, clean tasting goat milk on our farm.
So, which category do you fall under?
Are you lactose intolerant or cow milk intolerant or neither? I know some of you are intolerant to goat or sheep milk.
AND just to confuse matters, I also find I cannot digest goat dairy when the goats have been fed fermented feeds such as corn silage or haylage (fermented corn plant or fermented hay), so essentially all of the goat cheeses in the grocery store are not an option for me even if I did like the taste.
I have found that what the animals eat determines whether I can consume the dairy or not.
I love cheese and milk, yogurt and kefir.
It is this love of dairy products that keeps me going to produce grass-fed goat dairy that is processed in the traditional way that dairy has been made for thousands of years.
It is people similar to Will and myself and your gratitude for our products that keeps me producing at scale.
No matter where you sit with dairy, I appreciate your time to read and support our small and unique farm. Currently, there are not many dairies like ours in North America. My vision of agriculture in Canada and Ontario for the future includes many more farms like ours and with your support of our farm and others like it, this vision will one day become true.