Lactose content in typical yogurt...

Factual Questions
1

Hi, all. Someone told me the other day that they’d heard that most yogurts are lactose free. According to them, because of the way they are processed, the lactose is broken down to the point that people who are lactose intolerant can safely eat it.

Has anyone ever heard this? Got any facts to confirm or deny such a claim?

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  • Freewill39.
2

Not quite.

The enzyme lactase, produced by starter cultures Streptococcus thermophilus and Lactobacillus bulgaricus used to ferment some milk and milk products, such as yogurt, partially hydrolyzes lactose. But improved lactose digestion is primarily due to autodigestion within the intestine by the microbial enzymes. Lactase in yogurt does not improve the digestion of lactose in other milk and milk products consumed at the same time as yogurt.

From the bottom of the page.

3

While yogurt is technically autodigesting, the reality is that there’s yogurt and then there’s whatever that stuff is that sits on U.S. supermarket shelves.

Yogurt used to be a somewhat sour low-lactose product (the sourer the more the lactose has been changed into lactic acid), until the Dannon company started marketing a more palatable and highly sugared substance. Today’s yogurts have all sorts of things added to them - sometimes including extra milk products.

So while yogurt is generally quite well tolerated by people who are LI, some yogurts may have so little actual yogurt and true live and active cultures compared to the amount of dairy (and therefore lactose) in the container that they may cause symptoms in any case.