Anyone with lactose intolerance can attest to struggles over finding lactose-free foods, routinely scouring ingredient lists and choosing restaurants with menu transparency. It’s generally assumed that dairy is completely off limits, and in many cases, that’s true. That means avoiding anything deriving from animal’s milk, including, sadly, the wonderful world of cheese. But before solemnly shaking your head in sympathy for those folks, hold on a minute — it’s actually possible for cheese to be lactose-free. And we’re talking real cheese from real livestock, not vegan or plant-based cheese alternatives such as soy, nut, or rice cheeses.
For starters, cheese in general is much lower in lactose than other dairy products, and it may not cause problems for many with lactose intolerances. Remember the nursery rhyme about Little Miss Muffet who sat on a tuffet (aka footstool) eating her curds and whey? Well, if the little miss happened to be lactose-intolerant, the whey would scare her much more than the spider who sat down beside her. That’s because whey is where the lactose resides in milk. But when making cheese from milk, the whey is separated out, leaving only the cheese curds to do their fromagerie magic. Though whey remnants can remain, they mostly phase out as cheeses mature and lose moisture.
So, you guessed it, mature cheeses like cheddar and gouda can have little if any lactose by the time they reach your kitchen. The longer the aging process, the more time there is for lactose, which is a natural sugar nestled inside milk, to break down and dissipate.
How to tell when a cheese has zero or low lactose
There are basically two ways to identify cheese with no lactose. The first is to flip over that wedge or wheel and read the nutrition label. It likely won’t list lactose, or the lack thereof — but it will list the sugar content. If there are zero grams of sugar, there’s also zero lactose. For example, Cabot Creamery specifically states zero grams of lactose in varieties of Cabot cheddar cheese, which are available on Amazon, many of which hail from renowned cheese regions such as Vermont and New York. They include sharp, extra-sharp, seriously sharp, and even a mild cheddar, as well a Muenster and a collection of lactose-free Monterey, pepper, and Colby jack cheeses.
Aside from checking labels or looking for “lactose free” statements on packaging, you can generally enjoy low lactose in cheeses with long aging periods. These are usually hard, dry cheeses often used in Italian dishes, such as Parmigiano-Reggiano, which typically ages for one to two years, or Romano with a similar general age profile.
It is worth mentioning that zero sugar on a cheese label may still mean a tiny trace of lactose may be present, per U.S. labeling criteria. If it contains less than 0.5 grams of sugar, it qualifies to be labeled as zero. That amount is mostly negligible compared to roughly 13 grams of lactose in one cup of milk.
