Is It Lactose Intolerance Or Is It Gaslighting?

A short guide to help you identify if you're being gaslit about your dairy

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(This article does not intend to get into the minutia of the science or statistics. I’m using my real life work to paint broad strokes so you can take the information and explore facets of it in greater detail.)

Photo by Brian Suman

In the past few weeks, I’ve had dozens of conversations with people who say they are lactose intolerant.

“Would you like to understand a little more about the relationship between lactose intolerance and pasteurized milk?” I ask them.

Most are curious and eagerly want to learn. They miss having milk or cheese or ice cream and want to know if it’s possible again.

But one question that I’ve been pondering is how have so many Americans adopted to saying they are “lactose intolerant” without questioning what it means, where this idea came from or why many of us are not “lactose intolerant?”

While many of my articles tackle complex relationships between policy, food security, and our choices, this one is much simpler.

It’s a microcosm of how language is used to gaslight you about your food and your body.

For those interested in exploring the gaslighting of our food system in more depth, I encourage you to listen to the interview I did with

Josh Slocum

about this very topic.

Let’s start at the beginning.

What is “lactose intolerance?”