Where There's a Will, There's a Whey Allergy

My chemistry teacher in high school had a humorous coffee mug. It read "WORLD'S LARGEST SOURCE OF NATURAL GAS." This title rightly belongs to me, accompanied by my medal in stomach cramps. Recently I've been looking at my diet, and I think it's an issue with whey.

As you probably know, I work at Starbucks. Every day I drink about 16 oz of milk, usually steamed. Furthermore, I often supplement a small lunch (spend less money) with a smoothies with three scoops of protein powder. In case you were wondering, whey protein. All in all, I get a lot of whey.

I have for some time been thinking I'm mildly lactose intolerant. However, steaming milk breaks down much of the lactose (which is why steamed milk is sweeter, but this is not a post about coffee nerdery). As such, I don't actually get that much lactose. Whey remains. Further, whey causes the traditional respiratory symptoms that we associate with allergies. You know - those symptoms I have all the time.

If it is this, it's not severe - I've been tolerating all of these symptoms for quite some time, and can do so for the rest of my life (though I'd prefer not to). However, I could also just cut back on whey, lessening the effects and making it all less of an annoyance.

So here we go: I'm going to try to remove whey for a few days. We'll see if my nose is still running and...other things. It would be nice to not always have to excuse myself to, umm, relieve pressure. Perhaps this will take care of my gas problem. Now what can we do about the $3.95/gallon gas problem?

My chemistry teacher in high school had a humorous coffee mug. It read "WORLD'S LARGEST SOURCE OF NATURAL GAS." This title rightly belongs to me, accompanied by my medal in stomach cramps. Recently I've been looking at my diet, and I think it's an issue with whey.

As you probably know, I work at Starbucks. Every day I drink about 16 oz of milk, usually steamed. Furthermore, I often supplement a small lunch (spend less money) with a smoothies with three scoops of protein powder. In case you were wondering, whey protein. All in all, I get a lot of whey.

I have for some time been thinking I'm mildly lactose intolerant. However, steaming milk breaks down much of the lactose (which is why steamed milk is sweeter, but this is not a post about coffee nerdery). As such, I don't actually get that much lactose. Whey remains. Further, whey causes the traditional respiratory symptoms that we associate with allergies. You know - those symptoms I have all the time.

If it is this, it's not severe - I've been tolerating all of these symptoms for quite some time, and can do so for the rest of my life (though I'd prefer not to). However, I could also just cut back on whey, lessening the effects and making it all less of an annoyance.

So here we go: I'm going to try to remove whey for a few days. We'll see if my nose is still running and...other things. It would be nice to not always have to excuse myself to, umm, relieve pressure. Perhaps this will take care of my gas problem. Now what can we do about the $3.95/gallon gas problem?

Where There's a Will, There's a Whey Allergy