How much lactose is in milk, yogurt, cheese and kefir?
Last updated 7 August 2026
Most people who avoid dairy have never seen the actual numbers, and the numbers are the whole story. Lactose isn’t evenly spread across dairy — a glass of milk and a wedge of aged cheddar are, for practical purposes, completely different foods.
Lactose per 100 g (or 100 ml)
| Food | Lactose per 100 g/ml | In a normal serving |
|---|---|---|
| Cow’s milk (whole, semi or skimmed) | ~4.8 g | ~12 g in a 250 ml glass |
| Plain yogurt | ~4.0 g | ~6 g in a 150 g pot |
| Greek yogurt (strained) | ~3.0 g | ~4.5 g in a 150 g pot |
| Kefir | ~3.0 g | ~7.5 g in a 250 ml glass |
| Ice cream | ~5.0 g | ~5 g in a 100 g scoop |
| Soft cheese (cottage, ricotta) | ~2.5 g | ~2.5 g in a 100 g portion |
| Butter | ~0.6 g | ~0.06 g on a slice of toast |
| Aged hard cheese (cheddar, parmesan, gruyère) | ~0.1 g or less | ~0.03 g in a 30 g piece |
These are typical values; brands vary, and the figure on a label can differ by a gram or so. Lactico uses the same numbers internally to convert whatever you actually ate into a milk-equivalent dose.
Why aged cheese is basically lactose-free
Two things remove it. Most of the lactose leaves with the whey when the curd is drained, and the bacteria in the cheese eat most of what remains during ageing. By the time a cheddar has matured for months there is essentially none left — which is why so many people who “can’t do dairy” happily eat cheese and assume they’re getting away with something.
They aren’t getting away with anything. There was nothing there to react to. The same logic explains butter: it’s almost entirely fat.
Why yogurt is easier than its number suggests
Yogurt’s lactose content isn’t dramatically lower than milk’s, yet people tolerate it far better. The live cultures come with their own lactase, which keeps digesting the lactose inside your gut. Strained yogurts like Greek go further, because straining takes whey — and lactose — away with it.
How much can you actually handle?
More than most people assume. Research consistently finds that adults who malabsorb lactose tolerate around 12 g in one sitting — a 250 ml glass of milk — with no or minor symptoms, particularly when it’s taken with a meal rather than on an empty stomach. Spreading intake across the day raises the total further.
This is the single most useful fact about lactose intolerance, and it’s the one least often said out loud: for most people the condition is a matter of dose, not of total avoidance.
Two caveats worth stating. Individual thresholds vary a lot, and a minority genuinely do react to very small amounts. And none of this applies if you have a cow's-milk protein allergy, which is a different condition entirely — here's how to tell them apart.
What to do with these numbers
Use them to stop guessing. If a latte hurts but cheese doesn’t, that’s not random — it’s roughly 10 g of lactose versus almost none. And if you’d like to raise the amount you can handle rather than working around it, tolerance can usually be built back up.
Sources: USDA FoodData Central composition data; Suarez, Savaiano & Levitt, New England Journal of Medicine 1995 (tolerance of 240 ml milk in self-reported severe lactose intolerance); Deng et al., Nutrients 2015 (review of lactose intolerance management); NIDDK patient guidance on lactose intolerance.