Is butter safe for a dairy free diet?
Posted: Thu Oct 23, 2014 2:33 pm
Does butter have milk proteins that ruin my dairy free attempts? The labels say no protein but something is increasing my symptoms.
Hi Deanna,
Your suspicion is well-founded. Properly-made butter does not contain lactose, but lactose is a sugar, not a protein. A lot of so-called health sites claim that butter does not contain any protein (or contains very little). That's incorrect. Unfortunately butter contains more than enough casein, the primary protein in all dairy products, to cause most of us to produce antibodies. Ghee (also known as clarified butter) when properly processed, eliminates the casein from butter, so some members here can tolerate ghee, even though they are casein-sensitive. Unfortunately, the separation process is not always perfect, so some of us cannot use ghee without developing symptoms (if we happen to use a batch that contains traces of casein).
If you can't live without the taste of butter in your food, ghee would be much safer to use than butter. Whether or not it will turn out to be safe for you will depend on how sensitive you are to casein (IOW, whether you can tolerate trace amounts), and how carefully the ghee is filtered during processing.
Tex