Genius Gourmet’s 30 g Milkshake Says “Lactose-Free.” The Label Lists No Lactase. Here Is the Question That Raises, and Why It Is Not a Gut Problem

Lance Rankin, one of the original founders of Premier Protein, has spent the last few years in Idaho making keto bars, protein puffs and a clear sparkling protein drink under the name Genius Gourmet. Today he gets back into the business that made his name: a 30-gram protein milkshake, in Root Beer Float and Creamy Chocolate, at 1,400 Target stores, on Amazon and on the company site at $44.99 for fifteen cans, three dollars a can, with the root beer flavour due on Costco.com on September 21. It arrives a week after David’s milkshake and into a ready-to-drink protein category that Circana put at $13.2 billion and growing 11 percent a year.

The pitch is refreshingly plain. “Rather than relying on sugar-free positioning,” the announcement says, the shakes are “sweetened with cane sugar,” made with ultra-filtered milk, and meant to “taste like a milkshake first and a protein drink second,” in the words of the chief operating officer who formulated them. We read the can. It is an honest label with one interesting gap in it, and the gap is worth explaining precisely, because it raises a real question about two words on the front and, on the numbers, almost certainly not a problem for anyone’s gut.

The panelWhat is in the can

One 325-millilitre can: 170 calories, 2 grams of fat, 15 milligrams of cholesterol, 380 milligrams of sodium, 6 grams of carbohydrate, no fiber, 5 grams of total sugars of which 4 are added, and 30 grams of protein, plus 810 milligrams of calcium, which is 60 percent of the daily value and the quiet advantage of building a shake on milk rather than isolate powder. The ingredients, in order: water, ultra-filtered skim milk, milk protein concentrate, heavy whipping cream, cane sugar, natural flavours, dipotassium phosphate, sea salt, “fermented rice Reb M,” gum acacia, gellan gum. Contains milk. Gluten-free. Nothing artificial, no sugar alcohols, no fibre additives, no fat engineered not to digest. As protein shakes go, it is a short and legible list.

The two words“Lactose-free,” and the enzyme that is not listed

The product page describes the shake as “lactose-free” in its first sentence and “lactose free” in its second. Look at how the two most comparable products earn that phrase. fairlife, which built a company on ultra-filtered milk, answers the question on its own FAQ: “thanks to our ultra-filtration process and the use of a lactase enzyme, we remove the lactose,” and its Core Power shake lists “lactase enzyme” in the ingredients. David’s milkshake, also built on ultra-filtered skim milk, lists “lactase enzyme” second. Genius Gourmet’s list has no lactase in it.

That matters because filtration alone does not finish the job. Ultrafiltration pushes water, lactose and minerals through a membrane and keeps protein behind, but some lactose stays with the protein: a 2024 dairy-science study found that removing more than 95 percent of milk’s lactose by filtration required washing the retentate with about three times its volume of water, a step called diafiltration, and an earlier study of skim milk reported a 75 percent reduction after concentration and diafiltration, with lactose still present in what remained. The third ingredient, milk protein concentrate, is a powder sold to specification, and the industry standard allows up to 9 percent lactose in the common 80-percent-protein grade. Then there is the panel: 5 grams of total sugars, 4 of them added, which leaves one gram of sugar that came in with the milk. In a lactase-treated shake that gram would be glucose and galactose, the two halves lactose is split into, which is why Core Power shows 5 grams of sugar and none added. In a shake with no lactase on the label, whether that gram is lactose or its halves is not something a label reader can know.

There are innocent readings. The company may buy its ultra-filtered milk or its protein concentrate already lactase-treated, in which case the enzyme is upstream and, depending on how the supplier declares it, may not appear on the finished label; or it may test the finished shake and find no detectable lactose. What there is not is a rule to check the claim against. Nothing in federal food regulation defines “lactose-free.” The only lactose threshold in the code is for “lactose-reduced” milk, which 21 CFR 184.1388 defines as containing “at least 70 percent less lactose than regular milk.” The dairy industry’s own trade group has said as much: an International Dairy Foods Association spokesperson told Dairy Reporter that “there’s no definition for ‘lactose-free’ so it must be a ‘truthful and not misleading’ statement,” and that manufacturers typically rely on “analytical testing results of no detectable lactose.” So the honest status of the claim is: plausible, unverifiable from the label, and resting on whatever the company’s testing shows. We have asked Genius Gourmet which it is, and will add the answer.

Why it is not a gut problemOne gram against a twelve-gram threshold

Here is the part that should stop the worry before it starts. Suppose the worst case: every one of that gram is lactose. The systematic review behind the 2010 NIH consensus on lactose intolerance concluded that “most individuals with presumed lactose intolerance or malabsorption can tolerate 12 to 15 g of lactose,” about a cup of milk, in one sitting; the underlying evidence report found symptoms became prominent above 12 grams and “appreciable after 24 grams,” while “a daily divided dose of 24 grams was generally tolerated”; the NIDDK gives the same 12-gram figure. One gram is a twelfth of the threshold at which most lactose-intolerant adults first notice anything. A person who reacts to a gram of lactose is rare enough that they already read every label with a different question in mind. For everybody else, the “lactose-free” question on this can is about the precision of a marketing phrase, not about what happens after lunch.

The ingredients that are actually likely to be felt are the ordinary ones. Thirty grams of milk protein in a small can is a real digestive load, twice a day more so, as anyone who has pushed protein hard knows; in one small, manufacturer-funded trial of people with functional gut symptoms drinking 50-gram lactose-free protein milkshakes for ten days, the symptoms that remained tracked the protein itself, easing when it was pre-digested, not the lactose that had already been removed. The two gums are present in milligrams against tolerance studies run in grams: gum acacia at 5 to 40 grams a day for four weeks with “no significant drawback,” gellan at 200 milligrams per kilogram of body weight for over three weeks with “no adverse dietary or physiological effects.” If a shake like this bothers a stomach, the protein dose and the pace of drinking it are the likelier reasons.

The other small printReb M, six versus five, and the salt

Three smaller things a careful reader will notice. First, “sweetened with cane sugar” is true and incomplete: the list also carries “fermented rice Reb M,” which is rebaudioside M, a steviol glycoside, the sweetest of the stevia-leaf molecules, made here by fermentation rather than extraction; the FDA has raised no questions about several such notices. “Fermented rice” is the company’s description of what fed the fermentation. Both sweeteners are declared as the ingredient rule requires, in descending order by weight, so this is emphasis rather than omission: four grams of cane sugar carry the milkshake texture, and a stevia glycoside carries the rest of the sweetness. Second, the product page says “6g of sugar” and the Nutrition Facts panel says 5; the panel governs. Third, the sodium. At 380 milligrams a can, 17 percent of the 2,300-milligram daily value, this shake carries more than Premier Protein’s 230 or Core Power’s 260 on their own pages; the sea salt and the dipotassium phosphate that keeps milk protein from curdling in the can both contribute. It is not a large number for a meal replacement and a notable one for a between-meals drink.

The companyFifty people in Idaho and a category worth billions

Genius Gourmet launched in 2019 in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, employs roughly fifty people and says it is in more than 10,000 stores; Rankin co-founded Premier Nutrition, whose Premier Protein shakes became the category’s dominant brand after Post acquired the company in 2013. This is his second run at the same shelf, and the choice to use real sugar and real cream, at 170 calories, is a bet that the market has moved on from zero-sugar as the only virtue. On the label evidence it is a well-built product. The two words on the front are the one thing we cannot verify, and the one thing that, for nearly everyone who will drink it, does not matter. As of this writing Target’s website lists the company’s sparkling drinks but not yet the milkshakes. Genius Gourmet had no involvement in this article, which is educational, describes what the cited labels and studies say, and is not medical advice.