Tagatose and milk allergy.

Tagatose is a new food ingredient being used as a reduced-calorie sweetener in foods and beverages. Tagatose is a six-carbon ketose sugar found naturally in some dairy products and in tropical date trees. As tagatose is incompletely absorbed, it provides only 1.5 cal/g as contrary to 4 cal/g for sucrose. Tagatose has approximately the same sweetness as sucrose. Recently, a manufacturing process for tagatose has been developed allowing the production of increased quantities of tagatose. Tagatose has been affirmed as Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) in the US and is approved for use in foods and beverages in the US, Korea, Australia and New Zealand. Tagatose is a unique ketose sugar manufactured by the isomerization of galactose. The galactose involved in the manufacturing of tagatose is derived from lactose, the disaccharide found in the whey fraction of milk. Lactose is known to contain residual milk proteins including several of the major cows milk allergens, principally b-lactoglobulin and a-lactalbumin from whey, on occasion (1). Consequently, some questions were raised about the potential allergenicity of tagatose. Although lactose often contains residual milk allergens, tagatose is much less likely to contain any milk allergens based upon knowledge of the process used to Tagatose does not contain milk residues.