Economics Commentary - demand for lactose free milk.

        

As it was said, milk is a great source of vitamins, minerals and proteins that are indispensable for the health of the body but some people were born without the capacity of consuming this enriched drink because of some secondary components of the milk that causes discomforts in their bodies, this means that their bodies are unable to synthetize a compound that is presented in milk and its derivatives which is called lactose (often named the milk’s sugar) due to the lack of the special enzyme that is capable of synthetize this disaccharide which is the lactase. Due to the big amount of people in the society that is lactose intolerant, the largest milk companies had created a modified free of lactose milk to be consumed specially by people that presents this problem, but also some few firms had created another derivatives of milk without lactose to be consume by this type of people such as lactose free yogurt. A stronger competitor of these lactose free milk and derivatives is the soybean. Soybean is a substitute of the ordinary milk and cheese that is processed to be converted in milk for the consumption of this kind of people. By being substitutes of the ordinary milk both of them competes each other with the difference that one is from processed milk and the other from vegetal origin.

Milk for lactose intolerant people

P Processed free lactose milk                                            P             Soy milk

        S

        S

          →        ←

        →        ←

        D        D1        D1        D

        Q        Q

P        Processed free lactose milk        P        Soy milk

        S                S

←

                

        ←

        D1        D        D

        Q        Q

Besides the problems that lactose causes in people that can’t digest this sugar and the substitutes that had been created to provide them the same vitamins and minerals as the ordinary milk do, another kind of milk especially for the consumption for people who suffers osteoporosis had been released in the market. In countries where the majority of the population had an age average of nearly 50 – 70 years for example European countries such as France, Poland, Switzerland, the demand for this type of milk is sharply high due to the elder society that live in those countries. Old people are the most vulnerable to have a lot of disease, so as Europe contains countries where most of their population is older than 50 and they are vulnerable to many kinds of pathogens, milk companies had planned a strategy to modify the milk by adding more vitamins, minerals, proteins for maintain healthy the consumer because as they become older their vitamins and mineral will start to decrease and that’s why they have a low immune system and also reducing fats to avoid the increment of cholesterol. For having a lot of elder consumers in Europe milk, yogurt and other derivatives companies had started to sell these type of products for preventing and treating the osteoporosis, so the market by having many buyers and sellers and which the products that they sell are homogeneous (the same) is called perfect competition.        

Assuming the sale of osteoporosis milk per week, $2 each:

        

        Price        

                                                  D=AR=MR

        2                        

        

        Output

                

        Income elasticity of demand in milk especially for osteoporosis

        Engel Curve

Qty of milk demanded

                 

        Income

        

The new generation (teenagers mostly belongs it) do not consume the necessary amount of milk and other derivatives because of the fast food that nowadays is attracting them by the delicious fried food that they provides and also by the different beverages such as smoothies, cokes and artificially flavored juices. Because of this problem, healthy foods such as vegetables and especially milk demand will fall, also its complements as cereal.