7 Dairy Products Lactose-Intolerant People Will Love

There’s nothing like dipping a cookie into a tall, cold, glass of milk, whether you’re five years old or fifty. But for the more than one-third of all Americans (and 68% of the worldwide population!) who are lactose-intolerant, drinking or eating dairy products such as milk, ice cream and cream cheese can send them running to the bathroom with gas, diarrhea, bloating, abdominal pain and nausea.

Here’s why: milk naturally contains a complex sugar called lactose. “Lactose intolerance happens when the small intestine doesn't make enough lactase, which is the enzyme needed to digest and break down lactose into the simpler sugars glucose and galactose,” explains Amy Chow, RD, a registered dietitian nutritionist in Langley City, BC, who works with children and adults with food allergies and intolerances. Lactose intolerance can run in families, and is more common in the Asian-American, African-American, Hispanic/Latinx and Indigenous American populations.

The huge explosion in the market of plant-based milks has made life a lot easier for the lactose-intolerant, who can choose from a vast array of milk alternatives, including oat, almond, soy and coconut milk (plus frozen desserts made from all of the above). But still, there are benefits to drinking milk that comes from a cow, says Chow. “Milk alternatives can differ widely in nutrition profile,” she says. “For example, almond milk typically has 1g of protein compared to 8g of protein in cow’s milk.”

Thankfully, for the estimated 50 million Americans who can’t tolerate dairy, there are several tasty dairy products that come from a cow — and have the same nutrition profile as regular milk — but magically have the lactose removed (or try an all-new strategy for making the milk easier to digest). Here are a few faves: