Hard cheese

"Hard cheese" on an ingredient list is a category rather than a cheese, and it is used precisely when the maker does not want to name one - in sauces, ready meals and grated mixtures. Assume the long-aged end of the range, and its histamine with it, because that is what gets bought in bulk for flavour.

'Hard cheese' on an ingredient list is a category, not a cheese, and it is used precisely when the maker will not name one. Assume the long-aged end: cheese bought in bulk for a sauce or a ready meal is bought for flavour, and flavour means age, and age means tyramine.

Hard cheese is low because the lactose is gone, eaten by the starter bacteria over weeks of ripening. Lactose is the D of the acronym, and an aged cheese has almost none left - which is why hard cheese is one of the few dairy foods a low-FODMAP diet keeps.

This is where the gradient ends — a long-aged hard cheese has effectively no lactose left. Two things strip it: the whey (which carries the lactose) drains away at the curd stage, and the starter cultures eat what little stays behind over the months of ageing. The older the cheese, the less lactose. Parmesan, aged cheddar, gruyere and comte are usually fine even for people who react to milk. The figure behind that has a name and a limit worth carrying: 109 samples across 12 cheese types, analysed for the UK Galactosaemia Support Group, found NEITHER LACTOSE NOR GALACTOSE detectable in gruyere, emmental, jarlsberg, parmigiano, grana padano and mature cheddar. Comte is not among the twelve, so it takes its place here from the same ageing that empties the others, not from a measurement.