Filling a Much-Needed Void

A reader asked me if I could post some tips about living without dairy products, since it sounds like she may be facing a need to do that.

I’ve been doing without dairy for several years now.  I have an intolerance to casein, the protein in milk.  My reactions to it fall somewhere in between what doctors think of as classic allergy territory and what’s considered merely a “sensitivity,” so I’m not sure, technically speaking, what that’s called.  All I know is that mostly I can’t eat dairy products.  I can tolerate very small amounts, on a very occasional basis, of butter and heavy cream — I can eat ghee/clarified butter without a problem — because they are mostly butterfat with only incidental amounts of protein.  Clarified butter is all butterfat, the protein has been removed.

So I guess that’s my first thought: figure out, if you can, what aspect of the dairy is bothering you.  If it’s the sugar, lactose, you are in luck, because lactase enzyme may make it possible for you to eat dairy.  Lactose intolerance is really common, much more common than having a problem with dairy protein.

If it’s dairy protein that bothers you, you’re going to have a harder time.

Dairy ingredients are used in a lot of prepared products.  Baked goods, particularly, are loaded with dairy products in the US; it adds richness and improves mouth-feel.

If you must avoid all dairy, then you will have to avoid most prepared foods.  This is probably not a bad thing in the long run, it’s just kind of an inconvenience sometimes.

You need to learn to read labels.  Read carefully, not all dairy ingredients look like dairy ingredients.  Caseinate and sodium caseinate are found in a lot of meat products, in particular.  They’re dairy derived and if you’re allergic to casin, you’ll be allergic to these.  (I’ve had some unfortunate run-ins with sausages.)   Lactic acid may or may not be dairy-derived.  Whey protein and derivatives are off the list.  And of course anything that says “milk” — or “butter” or “cheese” or “yogurt.”

You also have to get a sense of what prepared foods are likely to include “stealth dairy.”  Dairy ingredients sometimes sneak in under the convenient phrase “natural and artificial flavors,” and also there are some kinds of foods that simply won’t have a label you can easily look at.  Nor do people selling you things necessarily know everything that goes into them — the person at the farmer’s market who sells you the sausage is not necessarily the person who made the sausage.  For me, the categories of food of which I am  most wary of dairy ingredients are: sweet baked goods, savory baked goods, sausages and other types of charcuterie for which a mixture is prepared (pates, terrines), jarred pasta sauces, prepared salad dressings, prepared sandwich spreads, and canned soups.

The solution is often to just not buy these things.

You can also take a shortcut and look for kosher certification on the label.  Kosher-certified meat products are guaranteed not to contain any dairy products.  For non-meat products, however, Kosher certification alone doesn’t mean something is non-dairy.  What you want to look for is the word “Pareve” or “Parve” or a big letter “P” — this means that it does not contain either meat or milk.  Kashrut authorities vary, however, on what counts as “milk.”  Sometimes if milk ingredients are sufficiently denatured by processing, a kashrut authority will decide that it is no longer “milky” in nature and will allow it in a pareve product.  So if you are particularly sensitive, you may wish to not place all your trust in this shortcut, and read ingredients closely anyhow.

More as I think about it, I’m sure.  If the person who originally asked about this has more particular types of questions in mind, please let me know.