Lactose intolerance vs. chocolate

Factual Questions
1

Help me pick a present.

Lactose intolerant people are to avoid milk and dairy products. What about chocolate?

(Whole) milk chocolate is right out, I guess (duh!). But there is chocolate which at least does not include milk on its list of ingredients - e. g. the bitter-sweet variety.

Acceptable?

2

First, "people with LI"are too varied to generalize about. Hardly any truly need to avoid all dairy in all circumstances. The great majority of them can have some amount of dairy, from tiny amounts in food or medications to a whole glass of milk, without suffering symptoms. And many of them know to take lactase pills so they can have more dairy without symptoms.

But milk-free chocolate - as virtually all dark, bittersweet, and semi-sweet chocolate is - is obviously OK. The milk fat that is sometimes added is lactose-free, BTW.

3

Yes, of course. Think about it for a minute; what you’re asking is “can people who are LI eat something without lactose in it?”

My boyfriend is LI and allergic to milk to boot, a double whammy. I made him some chocolates for Valentine’s day using dairy-free baking chocolate, and he was tickled pink.

4

I see. Well, I doubted that the simple absence of “milk” among the ingredients listed guaranteed that there’s no subsumed milk anywhere in there.

Thanks to both of you.

second hand peanut butter

5

Won’t be a concern in high-class chocolates, but watch out for whey.
Whey is used as a “sugar” in all variety of foods, and it’ll trigger lactose intolerance just as substantially as milk. Perhaps worse.

6

Seriously lactose intolerant person here. Yes, I eat chocolate, but not huge quantities. The only time I’ve had any trouble was with milk chocolate. But I prefer dark &/or semi-sweet anyway, so it’s not a problem.

To expand a little on what Jonathan Woodall said, if you see ‘whey’ or ‘milk sugar’ in a list of ingredients, they’re talking about lactose. It’s the same thing. It’s an extremely cheap way for manufacturers to sweeten up their products, and so you’ll find lactose in all kinds of foodstuffs. It’s even in MSG sometimes.