FINDING NO-ALLERGY DIET: MILK-FREE DIET
Cow’s milk is probably the most common item in the UK diet. It’s no wonder that allergists tell us that milk is also the number one cause of food allergy, especially for children. Common milk reactions include wheezing, runny nose and congestion, ear infection, rashes, vomiting and bloody diarrhoea. Those symptoms don’t show up immediately, though; there’s usually a time lag between drinking milk and feeling ill.
What makes good old milk so troublesome? Allergic people react to one or more of three milk components: protein, fats and carbohydrates.
‘Certain milk proteins are absorbed unchanged in allergic people,’ explains Del Stigler, a pediatrician and allergist in Denver, Colorado. ‘Beta-lactoglobulin, for instance, is a relatively large protein molecule which the normal intestine will strain out. But the intestine of an allergic person is abnormal, and larger molecules like lactoglobulins penetrate into the bloodstream unchanged, triggering reactions.’ Casein is another troublesome milk protein. But heating milk, says Dr Stigler, breaks down both.
‘Some people who are allergic to milk can tolerate milk that’s been heated. For instance, we don’t see as much allergy to formula or evaporated milk, which have been processed at a high temperature of 260 to 280 degrees. That breaks down the protein. People who are allergic to raw milk,’ Dr Stigler adds, ‘can often tolerate well-cooked milk.’ On the other hand, Dr Stigler told us that some people can drink raw milk, but not the heated, homogenized-pasteurized type.
He also says that whole milk (and butter and cheese) is sometimes better tolerated than skim or low-fat. Fat, it seems, slows the time that the stomach takes to empty food into the intestines, allowing more time for milk to be absorbed and fewer problems to develop.
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