Healthy Food Choices for Lactose-Intolerance

Lactose intolerance is when your body is unable to digest a sugar found in milk. Learn about the best diet for lactose intolerance in this nutrition video.

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Avoid milk & yogurt products
Use soy or rice milk
Choose non-dairy, calcium rich foods
Get 2 to 4 servings of calcium rich foods

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Mary Hondros graduated from University of Georgia with a Bachelor of Science in Dietetics. She currently works as a nutritionist for New Hanover County Schools in North Carolina. Her main focus is to teach children to improve nutritional habits.

MARY HONDROS: Okay, I'm going to talk a little bit about lactose intolerance. What happens when you have lactose intolerance is that your body's unable to digest a sugar and milk called lactose. This is due to the lack of the enzyme lactase that's usually found in your intestines that digest that sugar. So in people that have lactose intolerance, when they do have things like milk or milk products, and yogurts and things like that, is that it causes a lot of nausea, cramps, gas, bloating and indigestion. It's not uncommon to have lactose intolerance. About a third of the American population has some degree of it and it's definitely more common in some ethnicities like people of Mediterranean or Asian or African-American descent. So if you're trying to avoid lactose in your diet, you need to stay away from all regular milk products and probably yogurt products as well, because you can have varying degrees of lactose intolerance. Some people can handle eating foods like cheeses and yogurts while other people can't. 4 tips to remember if you do have any sort of lactose intolerance is that you probably need to avoid plain milk. A good substitute could be something like soy milk or rice milk, which don't have any lactose in them whatsoever. Secondly, make sure that you're choosing calcium-rich foods that are non-dairy or of non-animal like broccoli, pinto beans, leafy green vegetables, and enriched orange juice because those have added calcium as well that you might be lacking from not having milk products. Thirdly, make sure you get about 2 to 4 servings of calcium-rich foods a day, and like I mentioned before, soy milk and rice milk do count as a calcium-rich food. And lastly, if you know you're going to be eating lactose in some form, you can try taking something that you can buy at the drugstore called Lactasin. It basically--you ingest the enzyme in a pill form before you eat the lactose and it helps reduce those symptoms of cramping and gas, and bloating. And also, you can try taking something like a Gasex if you do happen to ingest some lactose and need some relief. So those are all tips on managing your lactose intolerance.

Healthy Food Choices for Lactose-Intolerance Video

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