In my ventures to avoid dairy at all costs, I have found myself at an odd spot. How do I know when a food has dairy in it? In something like iced coffee, the presence of milk is pretty evident. I first thought that it was only milk in cold, liquid form that cause me to be ill, but it isn't quite so. The Don-Katsu I had from a certain restaurant in K-town has also caused me much grief, and no liquid white milk was visible! It must have been in the sauce, although I can't think of how milk would go into don-katsu sauce. It's a bit like spaghetti sauce. Getting back to the point, cheese and ice cream (thank goodness) don't make me sick at all. Sometimes I have a bowl of cereal with (gasp) milk, and I don't feel too sick. So what exactly is making me ill? I have done quite a bit of research to find that lactose intolerant people almost always get ill after having dairy. I seem to have very irregular patterns of ill effects after dairy. My mom makes wonderful ºÎÄ£°³ of kimchi and potatoes and etc.. This is a lot like a Korean version of a pancake. The batter is made from milk and flour! I have yet to have gotten sick from it. So I checked the labels on the milk at home. In the listed ingredients, there was nothing remotely related to lactose. I think there was something called milk-proteins, but that really can't be similar to lactose. Lactose is a sugar that is found in dairy. It is because my intestines have stopped producting lactase that digests lactose, that I get sick. Since lactose is a sugar form, it is not in a milk-protein, provided that milk-protein is regular proteins found in milk. Proteins are composed of amino acids. Amino Acids, if my memory serves correctly, is quite different from the basic sugars, although essentially, they are composed from same elements, like carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. Hm. The reason I have thought of this is because for lunch I came across a dish called omelette (sp?) rice. Basically, rice and vegetables surrounded by a big tortilla-shaped-like eggs. While I ate this half-way, a sudden freaky thought struck in my head: what if this has milk/dairy in it!? As I finished it, I started to get a queasy feeling in my stomach (mostly from the fear of becoming ill, I think) and I kept telling myself that rice doesn't have milk in it, vegetables don't have milk in them, eggs don't have milk, etc. I analyzed all the food particles, but the sauce remains a mystery. I think the anxiety caused a greater effect -- my stomach felt queasy, and I thought more than a couple of times to attempt to vomit what I ate, but I decided against looking like a crazy, especially at work. I popped some pain relievers just in case. I am just thankful that there's only two hours left for work, and thankfully it's been a quiet, customer-less day here so far. I love eating. It feels like a trial for me to restrict it and think twice before I eat something new. (sigh)