As a dietitian employed in a gastroenterology practice, I am on the front lines of the dairy-free revolution. The vast majority of my patients struggle with digestive problems, and when they decide to test the utility of diet eliminations, dairy is often among the first foods to go. My patients with Irritable Bowel Syndrome often believe dairy provokes digestive distress. Those with Crohn’s disease or colitis often read online that the “right” diet for their condition involves eliminating dairy. Otherwise healthy patients of mine who lost their lactose tolerance earlier in life switched to soy milk and never looked back. Folks who lost their lactose tolerance as the result of intestinal damage from undiagnosed celiac disease never bothered re-testing the dairy waters once their gut healed on a gluten-free diet. For these reasons – and a laundry list of others – most patients I see have at least experimented with a dairy-free diet.
Once upon a time, the handful of dairy-free “milk” options – soy milk and rice milk, followed soon by almond milk – were reasonably easy to navigate. They had a common set of advantages: All were lactose-free, vegan, calcium- and Vitamin D-fortified products that were suitable for people with an allergy to cow’s milk protein. Soy milk offered a nutritional edge in terms of protein, whereas rice milk and almond milk tended to win out on flavor. But all three made a passable stand-in for cow’s milk in one’s morning cereal or latte, and people generally chose between them as a matter of hedonic preference.
But as time progressed, these dairy-free pioneers were followed by “milks” from an ever-growing number of sources: coconut, almond-coconut blends, hemp, oat … and more recently, flaxseeds, sunflower seeds, quinoa and cashew. Within many of these options, there are often “original” versions, unsweetened versions and various chocolate and vanilla flavored versions. Some of these dairy-free “milk” products have even spun off into cultured yogurt-like products and frozen ice cream-like products. But as these non-dairy “solutions” proliferate, they're starting to pose problems in and of themselves. Which one is best? And why do some of them disagree with you despite being dairy-free?
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