A "Lactose Intolerant Friendly" Frozen Dessert?

Another day, another frozen dessert. Everybody loves ice cream, yet everybody and their diet guru friends are looking to avoid the very things that make ice cream so delicious: the fat and the sugar and the carbs and the milk and the cookie fudgey syrupy stuff they add to make ice cream even higher in fat and sugar and carbs and etc. So company after company puts out a variation that knocks out one of those goodies and hopes that it can compete.

The latest is Arctic Zero, whose press release makes the standard claims of delight.

At Only 136 Calories Per Pint, It's Just What The Nation Ordered

A protein shake in an ice cream form with 136 calories and 20 grams of whey protein concentrate per pint. Targeting the childhood obesity epidemic with a delicious all natural dessert product that is both fat and gluten free, lactose intolerant friendly, and has no sugar alcohols.

Cool, that's... Wait a minute. "Lactose intolerant friendly?" Suddenly, my antennae have gone up. What exactly does that mean? How much lactose is there in Arctic Zero exactly?

You're not going to find out from the press release and I don't see any nutritional information on the Arctic Zero website.

There is a clue, and it may not be the one you think. "Whey protein concentrate" is an obvious warning sign for those who know that the whey portion of milk is where the lactose can be found. I usually tell people to avoid whey protein concentrate because of its high lactose percentage. However, there are many varieties of whey protein concentrate and some are as low as 10% lactose. That's still high, especially when you consider that milk is only 5% lactose.

The clue you probably won't recognize - unless you're a dedicated follower of this blog, which puts you into the info elite - is the sweetener Arctic Zero uses.

How is Arctic Zero™ sweetened?
Arctic Zero™ uses the patented all natural sweetener Whey Low® (nothing to do with whey protein). Why did we choose Whey Low® Sweetener? ...

We wanted an all natural sweetener that had all the benefits of low calorie and low glycemic, without any weird flavors or side effects.

Sounds good, although the benefits of low glycemic is an odd phrase. But what about Whey Low?

You dedicated readers may remember back to 2007 when I posted Beware Whey Low.

Why beware? Because, as the Arctic Zero site acknowledges, "Whey Low® is a scientific blend of three natural sugars: fructose, sucrose, and lactose monohydrate." A lactose-containing sweetener? Of course, the amount of lactose in a package of Whey Low used as sugar substitute is too small to matter. I'm not sure that still holds true when lots of it is added to a food as the main sweetener.

So I would hold off on Arctic Zero unless you're in the mood for a trial and error experiment.