Milking a Fad

By Christine Gorman

Does your breakfast bowl of Cheerios in milk not go down as easily as it used to? Do those big double-fudge ice-cream bars you love so much leave your stomach feeling queasy these days? If so, you may be suffering from an inability to digest lactose, the natural sugar found in dairy foods. Or maybe you have just swallowed one too many advertisements for Lactaid, Dairy Ease and other products that are heavily promoted as a remedy for milk-induced indigestion.

If you believe the industry, "lactose intolerance" plays intestinal havoc with as many as 50 million Americans. Even though many physicians and nutrition experts think the problem is not nearly that serious or widespread, increasing numbers of people are diagnosing the condition themselves and buying digestive aids that contain lactase, a natural enzyme that breaks down lactose into its simpler, component sugars. Lactase comes in pills or drops meant to be consumed along with dairy products, and it is used to treat special brands of milk. Led by marketing giants Johnson & Johnson, whose McNeil Consumer Products division makes the Lactaid line, and Sterling Winthrop, an Eastman Kodak unit that puts out Dairy Ease, the lactose- intolerance industry has gone from almost nothing a few years ago to 1992 sales of $117 million, up 27% from 1991. Such demand is particularly impressive considering the high cost of the products: reduced-lactose milk, for instance, costs up to twice as much as the ordinary kind.

There is at least an element of truth to the industry's pitch. Lactose intolerance, which should not be confused with allergy to milk, is a normal part of aging. By some estimates, three-quarters of the world's population gradually loses the ability to produce lactase inside the body and thus has increasing difficulty digesting lactose. People of North European ancestry do not succumb as often to the loss and can generally handle lactose throughout their lives.

But even those who lack lactase can tolerate milk in modest doses -- on the order of an 8-oz. glass of milk a day. Harmless bacteria that normally reside in the intestines easily metabolize the lactose. Unfortunately, these friendly germs produce gas as a byproduct of their activity. The more milk products consumed, the greater the gas, which can cause bloating, diarrhea and abdominal cramps. Downing solid food along with milk or eating yogurt that contains active yeast cultures cuts down on the amount of lactose that enters the intestines. Dr. Michael Levitt, director of research at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, points out that while some degree of lactose intolerance is very common, most people don't consume enough dairy products to experience a real problem.

The industry's estimate that 50 million Americans suffer from noticeable lactose intolerance is an extrapolation from studies in which the subjects were given the equivalent of more than a quart of milk on an empty stomach. Not many people other than those in National Dairy Board commercials actually chug that much milk.

"From my perspective, lactose intolerance has been a fad for 30 years now," says Dr. Douglas McGill, professor of medicine at the Mayo Medical School in Rochester, Minnesota. "There is nothing new except that business is after it." And business is not about to stop milking a veritable cash cow. Coming soon to your neighborhood supermarket: low-lactose cottage cheese and infant formula.