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Kairavi Sivasankar

Lactose Intolerance

When I was eight years old, after months of near-constant nausea, I was diagnosed with lactose intolerance. I didn’t really know what it meant back then, only that while I wasn’t life-threateningly allergic, I didn’t respond well to dairy products.


It was a bit of a pain for a long time. I’d have to refuse baked treats when someone had a birthday, pack my own snacks for field trips, and always check the ingredients written in fine print on the back of the food packaging. But as someone living in Asia, a continent not particularly known for its use of dairy, and in a time where veganism is becoming an increasingly adopted diet, dairy consumption isn’t that hard to avoid anyway. Besides, I never particularly liked plain milk.


Lactose intolerance is an interesting condition, as many people who have it take it perhaps less seriously than they ought to. It is the malabsorption of the sugar lactose, which means that one’s intestine cannot break it down fully, resulting in bloating, diarrhoea, and gas—not the most extreme reactions, but not the most pleasant either. The mild symptoms are possibly what cause so many people to take the condition lightly; after all, what’s the harm in taking a bite of that delicious cheese puff in exchange for a few extra minutes on the toilet?


It is also far more common than many think. People generally begin to show symptoms of lactose intolerance after infancy. Scientists believe that around 68% of the world’s population experiences lactose malabsorption, though malabsorption of the sugar does not necessarily equate to full-blown lactose intolerance.


The ability to process lactose differs geographically as well. People originating from Africa, Asia, and the Americas tend to have higher rates of malabsorption than those from Europe. Because they got less Vitamin D from sunlight, Europeans developed the ability to process lactose in order to get the necessary vitamin from dairy products. In contrast, people from other parts of the world didn’t evolve to tolerate lactose as well because they didn’t particularly need the nutrients dairy products provide.


A common misconception with lactose intolerance is that one cannot consume any type of dairy product. This is incorrect because different products contain varied concentrations of the lactose sugar. Heavy cream and pure milk contain the highest levels, harder cheeses and fermented yogurt have less, and butter has no lactose at all, much to my surprise. I only discovered this after five years of having the intolerance!


Having this dietary requirement has really taught me a lesson on how to appreciate the process of things, not just the end product. When I was ten years old, I rekindled my old love for baking after getting inspired by videos on the Internet. Even though I couldn’t eat the end products, I realised how much I loved getting lost in how ingredients came together to make a more enjoyable treat, and experimenting with different flavours to get a more interesting result. I enjoyed making food for others and seeing how much they liked it, how much I was able to make a dinner party or someone’s birthday slightly better.


Over the years, I’ve grown used to the dietary requirement, even forgetting that many people eat dairy on a daily basis. Although yes, sometimes I order a bubble tea when I’m not supposed to, damn the consequences.


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