How to solve lactose intolerance in milk?

Milk has become an indispensable drink for our daily nutrition. Have you ever experienced the discomfort of stomach rumbling or even bloating and diarrhea after drinking a lot of milk? So much so that you instinctively resist milk for a long time.

In fact, this phenomenon is not uncommon, and it has even been recorded by humans a long time ago. For example, as early as the ancient Greek era before Christ, Hippocrates, the "father of medicine" who wrote the professional oath for doctors all over the world, recorded this phenomenon among the crowd. However, it seems that for a long period of history, humans did not seem to pay much attention to this phenomenon. Why is that? Everyone should know that if you feel uncomfortable drinking milk, it is lactose intolerance. What is lactose intolerance? Is there a good alternative? Today, let's talk about milk.

01. Why has no one paid attention to the discomfort caused by drinking milk?

The reason why the discomfort caused by drinking milk has not been paid attention to is actually because the reason behind it is very simple: because the large-scale drinking of milk by the whole human race is a very late thing.

It was about 8,000 years ago that humans began to domesticate animals for milk production, such as cows, in today's West Asia. It should be noted that at that time, humans had already left Africa for the second time tens of thousands of years ago, and had crossed the Bering Strait to the Americas a long time ago. Since then, large-scale human migration has basically ended, and different ethnic groups have been formed in various places, with their own living habits. Therefore, for a long time, dairy cows did not spread to the world. For example, in my country, dairy cows did not enter my country until the middle and late Qing Dynasty.

Therefore, most people in the world do not have frequent contact with milk, so even if someone occasionally consumes milk or milk products and experiences this phenomenon, people often do not pay special attention to it.

It was not until the 20th century, as milk became a widely accepted food around the world and higher-quality infant food such as milk powder emerged, that scholars began to realize the problem: gastrointestinal discomfort after consuming milk and related products is widespread, which has also given rise to a new term: lactose intolerance, which is the situation of intolerance to the lactose in milk.

02. Lactose intolerance, a new discovery

As we mentioned earlier, before this, since the number of people consuming milk was relatively small and the main group consuming milk were Europeans and Americans, the proportion of them having abnormal reactions to milk was very low, so the possibility of discovering lactose intolerance was very small. These phenomena were later considered by scientists to be lactase persistence.

However, when the consumption of milk began to expand to other ethnic groups, the incidence of discomfort after consuming milk became more and more obvious. At this time, researchers began to realize that this was not a rare situation and needed to be studied.

Therefore, in 1963, Arne Dahlqvist of Lund University began to explore the substances in milk that cause human discomfort. After a series of comparative experiments, he realized that the factor that causes human discomfort to milk is mainly a component in milk: lactose [1].

This ingredient, which normally exists in breast milk, is the main factor that causes gastrointestinal discomfort after people drink milk and eat dairy products.

Since lactose cannot be digested, it enters the intestines directly and is then broken down by intestinal microorganisms, causing abdominal bloating and even diarrhea.

Maybe at this point, someone will ask: Since lactose is widely present, why are children fine?

This involves the decomposition process of lactose. There is an enzyme in the human body called lactase. As the name suggests, it is an enzyme that can decompose lactose. After decomposition, lactose can be absorbed normally by the human body. In fact, this enzyme is basically turned on when children are young, so most children do not need to face the problem of lactose intolerance. However, as they grow up, this enzyme begins to be gradually turned off, resulting in lactose intolerance. Moreover, this enzyme also shows differences in the population. For example, the lactase of traditional milk-feeding groups will basically be maintained, but other groups will basically be gradually turned off. As a result, up to 70% of the human population will experience this situation.

Of course, the underlying factor is genetics. Lactase is affected by the MCM6 gene. Differences in its genes affect the metabolism of lactose in different ethnic groups [2].

For example, the above picture shows the lactose tolerance of different ethnic groups. The lighter the color, the higher the lactose intolerance. The East Asian population can be said to have a very high rate of lactose intolerance. Are you lactose intolerant? You might as well recall that after drinking a glass of milk, do you have a bloated and gurgling stomach, sometimes pain or even diarrhea, or nausea and vomiting? If the main phenomenon here occurs, then you are most likely lactose intolerant.

03. How to solve lactose intolerance?

How to solve lactose intolerance? As we mentioned above, lactose intolerance is related to genes, and changing genes requires many generations of people and strong selection to achieve, so is there any other way to solve this problem?

People's earliest idea was to directly hydrolyze the lactose in milk, but they found that this would increase the cost sharply and could not be widely promoted.

So, going back to the essence, the main significance of supplementing milk lies in the nutrients in milk, such as protein. In this case, can't we get the same nutrients from other sources? Animal sources are definitely not counted, after all, lactose is the basic component of animal milk, but there are plants, which are also the main food for us humans.

Therefore, ever since Arne Dahlqvist of the Nutrition Department of Lund University discovered the phenomenon of human lactose intolerance, his department has become the main team in the search for alternative milk and has launched more than two decades of systematic research on lactose intolerance.

In 1989, Rickard Oste, who worked in the same department as Arne Dahlqvist, was an important member leading this research. He decided to take a different approach and look for an alternative strategy to milk, that is, to use lactose-free plants as plant milk to solve lactose intolerance. After comparing many plants, they finally locked on a target: oats.

04. Why oats?

There are several factors why oats are chosen as an important source.

First of all, the taste must be similar to that of milk , which is actually difficult for many plants. Oats are unique. For a long history, oats have been one of the auxiliary ingredients for brewing beer. This is because oats make the taste of beer round and smooth, and give beer a creamy flavor, which many plants do not have. Therefore, this makes oats a strong candidate for milk substitute.

**Secondly: Sufficient nutrition. **Oats themselves are very rich in nutrients. For example, the protein content of oat bran can be as high as 30%, and albumin, globulin and the like are also available. For example, we compare the common

As a widely grown grain crop, oats are rich in nutrients. For example, oat milk is rich in protein. The protein content of raw oats alone is as high as 30%. Oat milk also contains albumin, globulin, alcohol-soluble protein and glutenin, and the content is relatively high [3].

As for the essential amino acids found in protein, oats are particularly complete[4]. For this reason, oat milk can be used as a good source of protein.

Oats are rich in not only protein, but also carbohydrates, fats, trace elements, dietary fiber and other ingredients[4].

**The third and most important point: oats do not contain lactose. **This can directly avoid lactose intolerance, allowing people to supplement with confidence.

05. Advantages of oat milk

With oat milk, people with lactose intolerance can have a new choice. After all, liquid is the fastest way to supplement nutrition, which is also the main reason why milk has quickly become a mainstream beverage in the world and is called "white blood" in the past century. The advantages of oat milk are not just that. You know, it comes from plants and must have unique advantages of plants, such as dietary fiber.

The nutrition needed by humans has always been at the forefront of nutrition research, and cognition has been enriched. At the beginning, people believed that the main nutrients were: water, protein, carbohydrates and lipids, which are nutrients that almost everything has. With the development of cognition, people gradually realized that mineral elements are also necessary nutrients. For example, our calcium plays an important role in bone growth and cell signaling.

Later, vitamins also became essential nutrients. Many vitamins are essential for the body, such as vitamin C, which is essential for the body's antioxidant function, and vitamin D, which is an important participant in bone development. Now, scholars have proposed a seventh nutrient: dietary fiber.

Dietary fiber is a polysaccharide mainly from plants. It was once considered a non-nutritional substance, but with the development of cognition, people realized that dietary fiber is also indispensable to the human body. It is necessary for digestion and is also very beneficial to the body's health, such as the metabolism of cholesterol, triglycerides and blood sugar.

Because of this, dietary fiber has become a new favorite in recent years. Oats are rich in dietary fiber, especially beta-glucan.

β-glucan is a non-starch, water-soluble plant polysaccharide found in the cell walls of the aleurone and subaleurone layers of oat seeds. β-glucan plays an important role in health. It can serve as food for intestinal flora [5].

This also greatly enhances the nutritional value of oat milk.

To sum up, from the existence and discovery of lactose intolerance to how to solve lactose intolerance and make oats a plant-based beverage, a long period of scientific exploration has taken place. This scientific journey has also solved the confusion of many people facing lactose intolerance.

1 Dahlqvist, Arne, Salvatore Auricchio, Giorgio Semenza, and Andreas Prader. "Human intestinal disaccharidases and hereditary disaccharide intolerance. The hydrolysis of sucrose, isomaltose, palatinose (isomaltulose), and a 1, 6-α-oligosaccharide (isomalto-oligosaccharide) preparation." The Journal of clinical investigation 42, no. 4 (1963): 556-562.

2 Itan Y, Jones BL, Ingram CJ, Swallow DM, Thomas MG (February 2010). "A worldwide correlation of lactase persistence phenotype and genotypes". BMC Evolutionary Biology. 10 (1): 36.

3 Zhou Li, Yan Danyun, Zhao Yijin, Liu Junguo. Research progress on extraction and functional properties of oat protein[J]. Food Research and Development, 2022, 43(17): 210-217.

4 FAO. FAO/INFOODS Food Composition Database for Biodiversity Version 3.0 –BioFoodComp3.0. FAO, Rome. 2016

5 Zhang Tian, ​​Yu Hansong. Research progress on the physiological functions of oat and barley β-glucan[J]. Grain and Oils, 2022, 35(03): 22-24+29.