Blessed by the Potato

It was not so very long ago that we were having a conversation with Ryan about lactose intolerance, or “lactardation”. Many people in his family are lactarded, and he was ordering essentially a cheese-covered dish of baked cheese with a coffee and cream on the side. He waxed on about how much he loved cheese, and that if he ever became lactarded like the rest of his family, to just put him out of his misery because life just wasn’t worth living without cheese. So it would be fitting that at that very meal I ordered a chocolate milkshake, and about an hour later found myself with terrible gas and cramping. The realization set in:

I was lactarded.

Oddly enough, I seem to be fine with regular milk and cheese — in fact, as a vegetarian cheese is one of my primary protein sources, and it never seems to bother me. It is somehow the combination of chocolate and ice cream that seems to set my stomach off. Not wanting to blame chocolate ice cream for anything (that stain? it’s… umm… blood), I resisted seeing the connection between my intestinal issues and ice cream consumption. After all, I couldn’t actually be lactose intolerant, because of all the other dairy I eat without a problem! Perhaps there was some other reaction with ice cream and chocolate that could explain the issue… but I couldn’t find any. Not even made-up ones on the internet.

The big test came this weekend when we went out to the marble slab and I packed one of my sister’s lactaid pills. Lactaid pill + chocolate ice cream = no tummy issues. That to me suggests some sort of lactose issue, even if I can’t explain why I’m fine with cheese. Of course, coming out fine after a single test isn’t really definitive, so I suppose that, in the name of science, I will have to go out and eat more ice cream. Just to be sure. It’s that or go to the doctor for a proper test, and between you and me, I’ll take the ice cream.