Early Man Couldn't Drink Milk

I think an important bit of fact is forgotten...early 'milk consumption' cannot be proved exclusively as to HOW it was consumed.

But an educated guess - if you study food history - is that forms of fermented milk were consumed such as kefir, yoghurt etc. Cheese making was what milk was mainly used for in certain cultures. Once milk has gone through those changes, a lot of otherwise intolerant to milk (straight) can consume ie. yoghurt, kefir and certain cheeses.

Early Mongols for example stored milk in goat bags made from the stomach (or was it sheep) which contains an enzyme helpful in making yoghurt.

Patricia makes a good point. Milk drinking is relatively recent, but making yogurt and soft cheeses like that is much older.

So what about breast milk? I don't know anything about this topic, really, but I DO know baby formula hasn't been around forever. Or is breastmilk missing the lactose, perhaps?

Cecilia: It's only a problem for adults. All children can digest lactose, but most people stop being able to digest it as they age.

Absolutely right , Ryan! Lactase begins to form in utero, and by birth, the baby can handle the high lactose concentration in breast milk. As the child ages, the lactase formation decreases significantly by ages 5 or 6.

There's also the whole issue of low-grade intolerance to dairy products - not necessary lactose - but milk protein.

Dr.J said:
Absolutely right , Ryan! Lactase begins to form in utero, and by birth, the baby can handle the high lactose concentration in breast milk. As the child ages, the lactase formation decreases significantly by ages 5 or 6.[...]

Except, of course, those populations where the micro-evolutionary process of neoteny (a genetic adaption that maintains a juvenile trait usually lost as one matures into adulthood) is found - those whose genetic makeup provides an ability to continue producing lactase into adulthood....many Europeans, Indians (subcontinent), Middle Eastern people have this genetic *mutation* that keeps lactase production present into adulthood.

I think what kind of bothers me about milk is that humans are the only animals that drink the breast milk of a different species.

I've made the switch to rice milk, and I can't hardly tell the difference.

And would you believe that my complexion has gotten better?

Brian

Add Japanese to the "mutant" list. My wife drinks it every day. Kids have drunk it in their school lunches ever since the end of World War II. There are dairies all over. Ice cream and cheese are popular. The "micro-evolutionary process" took about a week, I'd reckon. ;-)

I think the "lactose intolerant" meme is a variation of the "bumblebees can't fly" school of scientific research.

I've read before that some 70% of people are intolerant to milk on one level or another. It's a very recent adaptation in the human diet, only about 10,000 years since agriculture and dairies, compared to cooked foods which have been around for 100,000 years and to which we are now practically adapted completely.

So give it a few dozen thousand more years, and dairy tolerance should go from 30 to 99% or what not. But, personally, I think lactose consumption is not yet ready for prime time, and myself stick only to hard cheeses.

My husband and I gave up all dairy for about a year. My husband had never had any recognizable problems with dairy, and giving it up didn't change anything for him. But when he started drinking/eating dairy again, he had some lovely digestion problems. I didn't have any problem starting back on dairy.

But it showed us that we might have issues with food that we just don't notice, because our bodies have built up tolerances to them.

FWIW, my husband decided to keep eating dairy, and it didn't take long for his digestion problems to go away.