Can you develop lactose intolerance?

shaumom

I'd second attempting to cut out all dairy and see how you do. Because as everyone has said, yeah, it can happen at any time. Although, to note, lactose intolerance can occur due to damage of the intestines in the area where lactase is made. So sometimes, severe stomach bugs or food poisoning can cause temporary lactose intolerance. This is also something common with the damage from celiac disease, and a few celiacs I've known had lactose intolerance as one of the first signs of their disease (so if you start having problems with any wheat products, too, you should probably check into that - the treatment for it involves a dietary change, but no meds, so not super expensive for those of us in the non-insurance train).

For when you add it back in, IF lactose seems to be the problem, you'll want to do a little research on the dairy, because the lists on what is safe, and what is not, don't always agree with each other, or with people's experiences, and this is why.

The dairy that you can eat is the dairy where the lactose is no longer present, or present in very small amounts. When lactose ferments, the bacteria doing the fermenting EAT the lactose. So any product that is allowed to go through this process all the way, like buttermilk, or yogurt, has little to no lactose. Aged, harder cheeses have the lactose containing whey drained off, and the aging helps convert most of the rest to lactic acid. butter that has been clarified, like ghee, as the milk solids containing the lactose mostly removed. So you would think that would help figure it out, yeah?

The only problem is that modern manufacturing has completely bejanked the whole process, mostly in the USA. It takes time to ferment foods, so instead of letting dairy fully ferment, many American companies will allow yogurt/buttermilk to partially ferment only, and then they add in souring agents or thickeners to 'fake' the taste and feel of a fully fermented dairy product. So the product still has plenty of lactose in it. In fact, sometimes the thickener is MORE dairy, so the product can have more lactose than it started out with!

Cheeses can also have issues like this, but less often.

One interesting take on how to see if a dairy food has lactose or not is to look at the sugars, though - this article talks about it: https://lifehacker.com/the-best-cheeses-to-eat-if-youre-lactose-intolerant-1563386663

DananaNanas

You can develop food allergies at any age! My best friend used to LOVE shrimp until she had it one day (age 16/17?) and it nearly killed her! Ended up in the hospital. Now she has to carry an epipen anywhere she goes in case food gets cross contaminated!!