Silk Makes Almond Milk

Silk and soymilk are almost synonymous. Their website even has the URL of www.SilkSoymilk.com.

But soy has its own set of enemies. And grabbing a bit more shelf space always is to a company's advantage. So Silk is extending its tendrils and doing a bit of brand extension, introducing two flavors, original and vanilla, of Silk PureAlmond, a dairy-free, lactose-free milk alternative made from almonds.

The Wegmans site has a long paragraph taken from a Silk handout on the new drink, an oddity since they aren't listed among the store locations.

All natural almondmilk (added vitamins & minerals, including vitamin E). 90 calories per serving; rich in antioxidants (added vitamins & minerals, including vitamin E), lactose-free & soy free. 90 calories per serving. What makes our almondmilk so healthy? For starters, it's the almonds. Every little nut is a perfectly packaged powerhouse of natural antioxidants and more. In fact, we like to think of almonds as Nature's Perfect Nutrition - and that's where our almondmilk begins. We make our almondmilk with all the care, quality and wholesome nutrition you expect from Silk? Along with an excellent source of natural antioxidants (fortified with natural antioxidant vitamin E), each glass provides as much calcium and vitamin D as milk, with absolutely no cholesterol, saturated fat, lactose or soy. And best of all, it's just 90 calories. Perfectly delicious nutrition, just as Nature intended. Everyday delicious. At Silk, we believe each day should include its share of pure, delicious pleasure. Smooth and creamy with rich taste of almonds, Silk Pure Almond almondmilk is guaranteed to bring a smile - at only 90 calories a cup. Over cereal, in your coffee or straight up in a glass, it's a natural, healthy way to make every day just a little yummier. Enjoy! Delicious little almonds. Great big nutrition. Silk Pure Almond Vanilla Almondmilk: 90 calories; 30% DV calcium; 25% DV vitamin D; 0 g saturated fat; 0 mg cholesterol. Data drawn from USDA, ARS 2008, Nutrient Database for Standard Reference, Release 21. This almondmilk is made from almonds that were not genetically engineered. Made in USA.

Unless you are using an iPad, go to SilkPureAlmond.com for some of that Apple-prohibited flash animation.

Food Bank Feeds Lactose Intolerant Toddlers

Rich Miller of WFIE reported on an innovative plan to feed needy children. And that includes the lactose intolerant ones.

The Tri State Food Bank lends a hand in feeding pre-schoolers.

It's called the piggy back backpack program. Twenty back packs will be provided for pre-schoolers to take home over the weekends. The packs contain enough food for two breakfast meals and two dinners.

The $2500 grant for the program was written by USI [University of Southern Indiana in Evansville] students and the funds came from the university. They will provide food for the toddlers for a year.

"If a child at this age doesn't receive the proper nutrition it can affect their I.Q," said USI student Mindy Prien. "It can just affect their ability to learn. It is hard to concentrate on your lessons and learning when you're hungry."

Backpacks for lactose intolerant children will also be provided as part of the program.

Allergen-Free Baker's Handbook

The Allergen-Free Baker's Handbook by Cybele Pascal. U.S. News & World Report interviewed her.

Why did you write The Allergen-Free Baker's Handbook?
In my family, we have multiple food allergies, so we eliminate many different common allergens from our diet. The recipes in the book are a way for me to make baked goods that all of us can eat safely. I also wanted to write it for other people, too, so that no one is ever deprived of sweets and baked goods. All of the recipes in the book are [also] good for people on a vegan diet. The recipes are also free of hydrogenated fats. So they're really delicious and healthy for everybody.

Tell me about some of the food substitutions you make.
I tried to find ingredients that people can usually find easily at Whole Foods or their local health-food store or online. For eggs, I often substitute applesauce. I also like to use vegan yogurt, which is a really great way to provide the structure and moisture that eggs provide. I also use vegan yogurt instead of cream. For [cow's milk], I substitute rice milk.

Here's more about the book from the publisher:

The number of people with food allergies is skyrocketing, leaving puzzled cooks and anxious parents eager to find recipes for “normal” foods that are both safe and delicious. The Allergen-Free Baker’s Handbook features 100 tried-and-true recipes that are completely free of all ingredients responsible for 90 percent of food allergies, sparing bakers the all-too-common frustration of having to make unsatisfactory substitutions or rework recipes entirely. To make things even easier, energized and empathetic mom Cybele Pascal demystifies alternative foodstuffs and offers an insider’s advice about choosing safe products and sources for buying them.

As the head baker for a food-allergic family, food writer Pascal shares her most in-demand treats and how to make them work without allergenic ingredients. Her collection includes a delightfully familiar array of sweets and savory goodies that are no longer off-limits, from Glazed Vanilla Scones, Cinnamon Rolls, and Lemon-Lime Squares to Chocolate Fudge Brownies, Red Velvet Cake, and every kid’s favorite: Pizza.

In addition to being a lifeline for people with food allergies, sensitivities, and intolerances, these entirely vegan recipes are perfect for anyone looking to avoid artificial and refined ingredients, and those interested in baking with healthful new gluten-free flours such as quinoa, sorghum, and amaranth. Best of all, Pascal has fine-tuned each recipe to please the palates of the most exacting critics: her young sons. Lennon and Monte like these tasty treats even better than their traditional counterparts, and you will too!

Random House Trade Paperback
200 pages
List price: $25.00

Allergy-Free Desserts Cookbook

Allergy-Free Desserts: Gluten-free, Dairy-free, Egg-free, Soy-free and Nut-free Delights is a newly published cookbook by Elizabeth Gordon.

Safe ways to sweeten the day for people with food allergies

Some twelve million Americans suffer serious allergic reactions to nuts, dairy, gluten, and other ingredients typically found in desserts. Finally, here’s a collection of delicious dessert recipes offering a safe option for allergy sufferers who don't want to give up their favorite treats. Even though these recipes are completely free of gluten, dairy, nuts, soy, and eggs, you'll hardly notice the difference.

Allergy-free Desserts includes recipes for all of your favorite baked treats—cakes, cupcakes, pies, quick breads, cookies, and dessert bars. Written by Elizabeth Gordon, herself allergic to eggs and wheat, this indispensable cookbook will finally let you enjoy desserts safely again.

• Featuring 82 recipes and 44 full-color photos
• Recipes that taste just like the real thing—but without the gluten, dairy, nuts, soy, or eggs
• The perfect dessert cookbook for the millions of people who suffer from food allergies or Celiac Disease

Allergies shouldn't hold you back. Allergy-free Desserts finally lets you indulge your sweet tooth.

Wiley Hardcover
192 pages
List price: $22.95

More on the Genetics on LI

If you need any more reason to understand why the medical journal coverage of how actual everyday people react to lactose is so awful, as I've been covering in more recent posts than I care to link to, all you need to do is to look at what's hot and sexy.

Genetics is. How to explain that a study called High frequency of lactose intolerance in a prehistoric hunter-gatherer population in northern Europe by Helena Malmstrom et al., BMC Evolutionary Biology 2010, 10:89doi:10.1186/1471-2148-10-89, is getting coverage all over the planet?

The reader-friendly version can be found from UPI.com.

Stone Age hunter-gatherers who lived along the southern coast of Scandinavia 4,000 years ago were unable to digest milk, researchers said.

The findings support a widely held theory that modern Scandinavians descended from people who arrived in the area after the Stone Age population.

Unlike modern Scandinavians, the DNA of the hunter-gathers shows they were lactose intolerant, said researchers at Stockholm University and Uppsala University. ...

"The findings are indicative of what we call 'gene flow,' in other words, migration to the region at some later time of some new group of people, with whom we are genetically similar," Gotherstrom said.

A more technical account can be found on Razib Khan's science blog at Discover Magazine.

Exactly how, when, and by whom the genes for lactase persistence arrived in northern Europe, where they would in historical terms be almost instantly spread around the world by colonists, is a fascinating question. Just not our personal number one question. As long as that is where the funding goes and the newspapers hunt for hot articles, our personal problems will stay as ignored as they have been for the past couple of decades.

Life's not fair. And there's nobody to rant at.

More Desensitization Therapies for Allergies

The Boston Children's Hospital did a major and apparently successful test of desensitization treatments. I reported on them and a series of videos on the progress of the treatments in "Desensitization: the Hot New Word In Allergies and Desensitization Injections Cured Boy's Milk Allergy.

Today a report emerged from Dallas of another desensitization treatment, a different one of a different type. Take a look at Controversial Treatment Ends Food Allergies by Deborah Ferguson of the Dallas NBC affiliate.

Both treatments do have the same basic idea. Start with tiny quantities of the allergen, so tiny that the immune system can handle them with antibodies, and then so gradually increase the dosage that the body can keep up. It's based on well-tried cures for other allergy types.

"We fool the body's allergy and immune system by kind of sneaking up on it. We give very, very teeny doses of the food that causes the problem and gradually increase over time," is how Dr. Richard Wasserman described his food desensitization program. "This is an approach that has been done for one thing or another for a hundred years. It just hasn't been done for foods very often, and developing the protocol we use has allowed us to make a difference and take care of a lot more children."

Even in the small, 50 person trial, however, it's not all successes and champagne.

"Sometimes people do have problems and can't tolerate the food even with this procedure," Wasserman said. "This is a demanding thing for a patient and family."

The increasing number of successes is certainly promising and the fact that some insurance plans will pay for it is a cause for that champagne, especially for a $5000 program.

What's also great is that these programs are treating children who have had allergies for years. One 10-year-old who had to avoid dairy since infancy can now have milk.

Small clinical trials don't always translate into mass programs that everyone can use. The fact that several different programs are reporting good results is a good sign. Parents should talk to their pediatricians and keep informed.

Report from the LI Conference, part 20: Question 3 Summary

The NIH LI Conference draft report summaries the presentations from Szilagyi and Savaiano and Levitt to answer question 3.

What amount of daily lactose intake is tolerable in subjects with diagnosed lactose intolerance?

Among individuals appropriately diagnosed with lactose intolerance, differences in a variety of factors—including lactase activity, gastric emptying rates, fecal bacterial metabolites, colonic mucosal absorptive capacity, and intestinal transit time—can greatly influence their susceptibility to develop intolerance symptoms following the ingestion of foods and beverages containing lactose. Individuals differ in the intensity of symptoms of lactose intolerance due to differences in abdominal pain perception and psychological impact of pain and social discomfort. Determining the amounts of lactose that can be tolerated is an important step in developing evidenced-based dietary recommendations that meet the needs of the individual.

High-quality evidence to address the question is limited as documented by the 28 studies summarized in the systematic evidence review. Studies were variable in terms of the definitions of lactose intolerance, study population selection criteria, how lactose was administered, and the type of assessment methods. The lack of validated measures made quantifying the severity of symptoms difficult to interpret. The majority of studies used a single dose of lactose without food and evaluated short-term responses. Efforts often were not made to mask the taste difference between lactose-free milk and milk containing lactose.

To assess tolerability, only a handful of studies tested the subjects in a double-blinded fashion with increasing amounts of lactose administered throughout the day to determine the daily tolerable load of lactose. Furthermore, the majority of studies examined small numbers of subjects, and no data were reported on the relationships of age, sex, or race/ethnicity. No studies focused exclusively on children; two studies examined adolescents exclusively; and two others included both children and adolescents. Only two studies were conducted on pregnant women; none focused on lactating women.

In the majority of available studies, subjects were classified as malabsorbers or absorbers based on breath hydrogen measurements or a blood glucose test, and symptoms of lactose intolerance were not always required for study entry. A blinded control was rarely employed to define lactose intolerance at study entry; thus it is probable that some individuals would have reported symptoms following ingestion of lactose-free solutions. The majority of studies investigated individuals with proven lactose malabsorption, not diagnosed lactose intolerance. As a result, only recommendations for individuals with proven lactose malabsorption and perceived lactose intolerance can be made with reasonable assurance.

The available evidence suggests that adults and adolescents who have been diagnosed with lactose malabsorption could ingest at least 12 grams of lactose when administered in a single dose (equivalent to the lactose content found in 1 cup of milk) with no or minor symptoms. Individuals with lactose malabsorption can tolerate larger amounts of lactose if ingested with meals and distributed throughout the day. However, 50 grams of lactose (equivalent to the lactose content found in 1 quart of milk) usually induces symptoms in those adults with lactose malabsorption when administered as a single dose without meals. For women with lactose malabsorption, tolerance to dietary lactose may improve during pregnancy but then worsen after delivery. Some data suggest that the routine ingestion of lactose increases the amount of lactose that is tolerable in both adults and adolescents. There is no scientific evidence to identify the tolerable dose of lactose for children with lactose malabsorption.

We stress the importance of additional scientific investigations to provide evidence-based and culturally sensitive recommendations about the amount of daily lactose intake that can be tolerated by lactose-intolerant individuals, with special emphasis on pediatric and adolescent populations and pregnant and lactating women.