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I think it's the other way around with milk. Almost all mammals lose the ability to digest lactose in adulthood. Europeans slowly evolved to tolerate it, presum

I think it's the other way around with milk. Almost all mammals lose the ability to digest lactose in adulthood. Europeans slowly evolved to tolerate it, presumably because of widespread reliance on cows, sheep, and goats. It's a beneficial adaptation; milk is super-nutritious, and those animals convert indigestible grasses into digestible milk in environments where crops only grow for half the year.

sumedh 5y ago
Milk is pretty big in India but I have read that majority of Indians are lactose intolerant. So its a bit weird that lactose intolerant population uses milk heavily in its diet.
- edwcross 5y ago
  I can't speak for milk itself, but ghee (which is often used in India), for instance, is virtually lactose-free, so even lactose intolerant people can eat it. That also happens with cheese and other dairy products; so they are not entirely incompatible.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  Milk is available and regularly purchased in every Chinese store. More than 90% of them are lactose intolerant. It's not entirely clear to me why they drink so much of it, but I believe they consider it health food. It probably comes from copying Europeans. (Do note that milk is quite nutritious even when you can't digest the lactose. The problem isn't that the milk isn't nutritious -- the problem is that the lactose will cause you various problems, most notably diarrhea.)
  - eloisius 5y ago
    I've wondered about this to. Milk seems more widely consumed here in Taiwan than in the US. Milk tea, milk/fruit smoothies, cream-filled pastries everywhere, cheese is a very popular fusion with local specialties like danbing. If Asian people are so lactose intolerant, is everyone secretly walking around battling diarrhea?
    - thaumasiotes 5y ago
      Cheese is not popular, as far as I'm aware, on the mainland. But even if it was, it contains almost no lactose. Milk is different. I know the Chinese consume milk, but I don't think any individual person consumes very much. Some anecdotes: - A coworker revealed to me once that he was buying milk to feed to his baby. The baby, of course, would be able to digest lactose in pretty much any quantity. - I shocked a tutor of mine once by having a carton of milk for lunch. She told me it was very important not to drink milk on an empty stomach, or else "it will be diarrhea!" She didn't quite know what to make of my response that that wouldn't happen to me because I'm white. - A friend of mine told me that her parents made her drink one glass of milk per day, which practice she still continues (into her 30s). This tends to imply that it's seen as a healthful practice. - Another friend of mine, younger, spoke of milk explicitly in terms of its healthfulness, and when I asked if she drank a lot of milk herself, responded "maybe not a lot, but at least every 2-3 days".
    - gilrain 5y ago
      > is everyone secretly walking around battling diarrhea? That's my secret. I'm always clenching.
    - sct202 5y ago
      I think people have different tolerances, my siblings and parents all eat some yogurt and milk with no symptoms unless they eat a lot. I on the other hand have a much lower tolerance and carry lactaid pills wherever I go.
      - thaumasiotes 5y ago
        Yogurt, like cheese, doesn't contain lactose. Fermentation is literally the processing of sugar into alcohol. (Though see cheese_goddess's comment.)
  - leoedin 5y ago
    It's fairly simple to make lactose-free milk by adding the lactase enzyme. Maybe the milk being sold in China is lactose free?
    - thaumasiotes 5y ago
      Nope. I was specifically warned that I would suffer diarrhea if I drank too much milk. I don't, of course, but they do.
    - folli 5y ago
      It's (historically) even simpler to make lactose-free milk by making cheese or certain types of yogurt.
      - cheese_goddess 5y ago
        Cheese is not necessarily lactose-free. It depends on the type of cheese. tl;dr, cheese has less lactose than milk but not necessarily 0%. As a rule-of-thumb, softer, crumblier, fresher, tangier cheeses, and yogurt, should be expected to have less lactose than harder, longer-aged firm and elastic and sweeter cheeses, but again not necessarily 0%. Now for the long version. Fresh milk has a sweet taste thanks to the lactose it contains. Lactose is a complex sugar composed of two simple sugars, glucose and galactose. When cheese or yogurt are made, lactic acid bacteria (LAB) ferment the lactose in milk and produce lactic acid (hence their name). Lactic acid lowers the pH of the milk and so the cheese or yogurt ends up more acidic, therefore tasting tangier, than the milk used to make it. Lower pH also affects the texture of the cheese: as a rule, more acidic cheeses are softer and crumblier whereas less acidic cheeses are firmer and with a more elastic texture. The cheesemaking process controls the extent to which fermentation is allowed to continue and acidity to develop. Some cheeses, like cheddar, are salted to stop (rather, slow down) the activity of LAB and arrest the development of acidity. Others, like fresh goat's cheeses, are left to ferment all the way. Yogurt is allowed to ferment all the way also. LAB activity generally stops at a pH of 4.6, at which point most LAB become inactive, but that doesn't mean that all of the lactose is consumed when that pH is reached. It depends on how much lactose was in the milk to begin with and how fast the fermentation advanced during the making of the cheese. In making Italian Cacciota cheese, a warm-room technique is used to bring the curd to a temperature near the optimum of the LAB culture, so that all the lactose is consumed quickly and the cheese reaches its target pH of 5.2 (so higher than 4.6), in a relatively short time (hours rather than days). "Washed curd" cheeses like Gouda, have a step in their make where whey is replaced with water, to "wash out" the lactose and stop the fermentation, so that the cheese retains its milky sweeteness. Acidity can also decrease (pH increase) during ripening. Some bloomy rind type cheeses like camambert start out quite acidic, with a low pH under 5.0 but their pH increases while they age because the molds and yeasts on their rind (that give them their characteristic white coats) consume lactic acid and release ammonia (which, being basic, raises the pH back up). So it's not always easy to know how much lactose is in cheese and yogurt and it's not even an absolute rule that more acidic taste means more complete fermentation and so less lactose. Certainly, cheese can still have lactose. Less than milk, but not 0%. The safest bet is to look at the ingredients listed on the packaging, which sometimes (but not always) will list the amount of lactose.
  - hnick 5y ago
    A2 milk is (was?) very popular in China, people bought it and shipped it back home so much that some stores had to implement quotas here in Aus. It supposedly has the same amount of lactose but fewer symptoms of intolerance.
    - cheese_goddess 5y ago
      A2 is one of the two most common variants of β-casein, the dominant type of protein in cow's milk (A1 is the other most common variant and they're named in the order in which they were identified). A2 has nothing to do with lactose, which is a sugar, not a protein. So "A2 milk" is milk with a smaller amount of A2 β-casein than normal and it should make no difference to people who cannot digest lactose. Be aware also that the health claims surrounding "A2 milk" are bunkum, much like the claims about "Real Water" [1] etc "health foods". From wikipedia: > The a2 Milk Company claims that milk containing A1 proteins is harmful, and some companies producing goat's milk products make similar claims,[5] but a 2009 European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) review found that it could not be established that bioactive peptides in milk containing both the A1 and A2 proteins have an adverse effect on health. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A2_milk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A2_milk ______________ [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/21/real-water-alkalized-liver-illness-death https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/21/real-water-a...
      - hnick 5y ago
        Yeah I assumed as much but didn't care to research for my own benefit because I buy something else. They're really into Manuka honey too, which AFAIK was proven to work but only for topical applications. They tend to chase these 'health' trends a lot with foreign products from what I've seen. The melamine milk scandal probably has a lot to do with it all.
  - andi999 5y ago
    There is a believe Europeans are taller because of drinking milk during childhood. Also milk is considered healthy. I think you can build up a little of lactose tolerance with moderate intake (and it seem you can loose it, happened to me after staying away from milk products due to living in Asia for a couple of years)
    - thaumasiotes 5y ago
      > I think you can build up a little of lactose tolerance with moderate intake (and it seem you can loose it, happened to me after staying away from milk products due to living in Asia for a couple of years) There are three major strategies a human body may implement for lactase: The first is that you produce lactase as an infant, and then you stop producing it. This is the mammalian norm. The second is that you produce lactase as an infant, and then you never stop producing it. But the third is that you produce lactase as an infant, and then you keep producing it so long as lactose is a regular part of your diet. You will permanently stop producing it if you ever go for a significant period without consuming lactose. It sounds like you were a type 3.
  - em-bee 5y ago
    from my observation the chinese don't actually drink that much milk. they buy it for children, and the reason why you see lots of milk in the store is because there are a lot more people living there. they also like to buy in bulk as gift for relatives, and they usually buy heat-treated milk that doesn't need to be cooled either. fresh milk is available, but compared to the size of the population, it's not as much as it seems. in the one million-people town where i live, i only know two supermarkets that stock fresh milk.
    - thaumasiotes 5y ago
      > fresh milk is available, but compared to the size of the population, it's not as much as it seems. in the one million-people town where i live, i only know two supermarkets that stock fresh milk. I was aware of the availability of imported boxed UHT milk. My experience is that it shows up in supermarkets in an "imports" section. (I tried it and found it extremely unpalatable.) Fresh milk is available much more widely (in Shanghai, which is large). It's in every supermarket and every convenience store. The most common brand is named "Fresh Milk" (blue carton), which I wasn't able to drink without becoming nauseated, but there is also a "locally produced" (whitish carton, I don't remember the actual brand name) brand which I consumed in very large amounts.
- raducu 5y ago
  I am lactose intolerant just like my father and usually avoid milk, but traditionally my family did not avoid it. I can increase my tolerance to milk gradually, but I find no benefit in doing so, because I can drink up to 200 ml of milk without major issues, I can eat cookies, icecream and so on without major problems. The only time I had major problems was when I used milk protein powder, but I switched to whey protein at that time and learnt that I was lactose intolerant. My point is lactose intolerance doesn't have to be all or nothing.
michael1999 5y ago
It’s so beneficial for pastoral populations, it arose several times in distant populations. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactase_persistence https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactase_persistence

sumedh 5y ago

Milk is pretty big in India but I have read that majority of Indians are lactose intolerant. So its a bit weird that lactose intolerant population uses milk heavily in its diet.

edwcross 5y ago
I can't speak for milk itself, but ghee (which is often used in India), for instance, is virtually lactose-free, so even lactose intolerant people can eat it. That also happens with cheese and other dairy products; so they are not entirely incompatible.
thaumasiotes 5y ago
Milk is available and regularly purchased in every Chinese store. More than 90% of them are lactose intolerant. It's not entirely clear to me why they drink so much of it, but I believe they consider it health food. It probably comes from copying Europeans. (Do note that milk is quite nutritious even when you can't digest the lactose. The problem isn't that the milk isn't nutritious -- the problem is that the lactose will cause you various problems, most notably diarrhea.)
- eloisius 5y ago
  I've wondered about this to. Milk seems more widely consumed here in Taiwan than in the US. Milk tea, milk/fruit smoothies, cream-filled pastries everywhere, cheese is a very popular fusion with local specialties like danbing. If Asian people are so lactose intolerant, is everyone secretly walking around battling diarrhea?
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    Cheese is not popular, as far as I'm aware, on the mainland. But even if it was, it contains almost no lactose. Milk is different. I know the Chinese consume milk, but I don't think any individual person consumes very much. Some anecdotes: - A coworker revealed to me once that he was buying milk to feed to his baby. The baby, of course, would be able to digest lactose in pretty much any quantity. - I shocked a tutor of mine once by having a carton of milk for lunch. She told me it was very important not to drink milk on an empty stomach, or else "it will be diarrhea!" She didn't quite know what to make of my response that that wouldn't happen to me because I'm white. - A friend of mine told me that her parents made her drink one glass of milk per day, which practice she still continues (into her 30s). This tends to imply that it's seen as a healthful practice. - Another friend of mine, younger, spoke of milk explicitly in terms of its healthfulness, and when I asked if she drank a lot of milk herself, responded "maybe not a lot, but at least every 2-3 days".
  - gilrain 5y ago
    > is everyone secretly walking around battling diarrhea? That's my secret. I'm always clenching.
  - sct202 5y ago
    I think people have different tolerances, my siblings and parents all eat some yogurt and milk with no symptoms unless they eat a lot. I on the other hand have a much lower tolerance and carry lactaid pills wherever I go.
    - thaumasiotes 5y ago
      Yogurt, like cheese, doesn't contain lactose. Fermentation is literally the processing of sugar into alcohol. (Though see cheese_goddess's comment.)
- leoedin 5y ago
  It's fairly simple to make lactose-free milk by adding the lactase enzyme. Maybe the milk being sold in China is lactose free?
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    Nope. I was specifically warned that I would suffer diarrhea if I drank too much milk. I don't, of course, but they do.
  - folli 5y ago
    It's (historically) even simpler to make lactose-free milk by making cheese or certain types of yogurt.
    - cheese_goddess 5y ago
      Cheese is not necessarily lactose-free. It depends on the type of cheese. tl;dr, cheese has less lactose than milk but not necessarily 0%. As a rule-of-thumb, softer, crumblier, fresher, tangier cheeses, and yogurt, should be expected to have less lactose than harder, longer-aged firm and elastic and sweeter cheeses, but again not necessarily 0%. Now for the long version. Fresh milk has a sweet taste thanks to the lactose it contains. Lactose is a complex sugar composed of two simple sugars, glucose and galactose. When cheese or yogurt are made, lactic acid bacteria (LAB) ferment the lactose in milk and produce lactic acid (hence their name). Lactic acid lowers the pH of the milk and so the cheese or yogurt ends up more acidic, therefore tasting tangier, than the milk used to make it. Lower pH also affects the texture of the cheese: as a rule, more acidic cheeses are softer and crumblier whereas less acidic cheeses are firmer and with a more elastic texture. The cheesemaking process controls the extent to which fermentation is allowed to continue and acidity to develop. Some cheeses, like cheddar, are salted to stop (rather, slow down) the activity of LAB and arrest the development of acidity. Others, like fresh goat's cheeses, are left to ferment all the way. Yogurt is allowed to ferment all the way also. LAB activity generally stops at a pH of 4.6, at which point most LAB become inactive, but that doesn't mean that all of the lactose is consumed when that pH is reached. It depends on how much lactose was in the milk to begin with and how fast the fermentation advanced during the making of the cheese. In making Italian Cacciota cheese, a warm-room technique is used to bring the curd to a temperature near the optimum of the LAB culture, so that all the lactose is consumed quickly and the cheese reaches its target pH of 5.2 (so higher than 4.6), in a relatively short time (hours rather than days). "Washed curd" cheeses like Gouda, have a step in their make where whey is replaced with water, to "wash out" the lactose and stop the fermentation, so that the cheese retains its milky sweeteness. Acidity can also decrease (pH increase) during ripening. Some bloomy rind type cheeses like camambert start out quite acidic, with a low pH under 5.0 but their pH increases while they age because the molds and yeasts on their rind (that give them their characteristic white coats) consume lactic acid and release ammonia (which, being basic, raises the pH back up). So it's not always easy to know how much lactose is in cheese and yogurt and it's not even an absolute rule that more acidic taste means more complete fermentation and so less lactose. Certainly, cheese can still have lactose. Less than milk, but not 0%. The safest bet is to look at the ingredients listed on the packaging, which sometimes (but not always) will list the amount of lactose.
- hnick 5y ago
  A2 milk is (was?) very popular in China, people bought it and shipped it back home so much that some stores had to implement quotas here in Aus. It supposedly has the same amount of lactose but fewer symptoms of intolerance.
  - cheese_goddess 5y ago
    A2 is one of the two most common variants of β-casein, the dominant type of protein in cow's milk (A1 is the other most common variant and they're named in the order in which they were identified). A2 has nothing to do with lactose, which is a sugar, not a protein. So "A2 milk" is milk with a smaller amount of A2 β-casein than normal and it should make no difference to people who cannot digest lactose. Be aware also that the health claims surrounding "A2 milk" are bunkum, much like the claims about "Real Water" [1] etc "health foods". From wikipedia: > The a2 Milk Company claims that milk containing A1 proteins is harmful, and some companies producing goat's milk products make similar claims,[5] but a 2009 European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) review found that it could not be established that bioactive peptides in milk containing both the A1 and A2 proteins have an adverse effect on health. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A2_milk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A2_milk ______________ [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/21/real-water-alkalized-liver-illness-death https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/21/real-water-a...
    - hnick 5y ago
      Yeah I assumed as much but didn't care to research for my own benefit because I buy something else. They're really into Manuka honey too, which AFAIK was proven to work but only for topical applications. They tend to chase these 'health' trends a lot with foreign products from what I've seen. The melamine milk scandal probably has a lot to do with it all.
- andi999 5y ago
  There is a believe Europeans are taller because of drinking milk during childhood. Also milk is considered healthy. I think you can build up a little of lactose tolerance with moderate intake (and it seem you can loose it, happened to me after staying away from milk products due to living in Asia for a couple of years)
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    > I think you can build up a little of lactose tolerance with moderate intake (and it seem you can loose it, happened to me after staying away from milk products due to living in Asia for a couple of years) There are three major strategies a human body may implement for lactase: The first is that you produce lactase as an infant, and then you stop producing it. This is the mammalian norm. The second is that you produce lactase as an infant, and then you never stop producing it. But the third is that you produce lactase as an infant, and then you keep producing it so long as lactose is a regular part of your diet. You will permanently stop producing it if you ever go for a significant period without consuming lactose. It sounds like you were a type 3.
- em-bee 5y ago
  from my observation the chinese don't actually drink that much milk. they buy it for children, and the reason why you see lots of milk in the store is because there are a lot more people living there. they also like to buy in bulk as gift for relatives, and they usually buy heat-treated milk that doesn't need to be cooled either. fresh milk is available, but compared to the size of the population, it's not as much as it seems. in the one million-people town where i live, i only know two supermarkets that stock fresh milk.
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    > fresh milk is available, but compared to the size of the population, it's not as much as it seems. in the one million-people town where i live, i only know two supermarkets that stock fresh milk. I was aware of the availability of imported boxed UHT milk. My experience is that it shows up in supermarkets in an "imports" section. (I tried it and found it extremely unpalatable.) Fresh milk is available much more widely (in Shanghai, which is large). It's in every supermarket and every convenience store. The most common brand is named "Fresh Milk" (blue carton), which I wasn't able to drink without becoming nauseated, but there is also a "locally produced" (whitish carton, I don't remember the actual brand name) brand which I consumed in very large amounts.
raducu 5y ago
I am lactose intolerant just like my father and usually avoid milk, but traditionally my family did not avoid it. I can increase my tolerance to milk gradually, but I find no benefit in doing so, because I can drink up to 200 ml of milk without major issues, I can eat cookies, icecream and so on without major problems. The only time I had major problems was when I used milk protein powder, but I switched to whey protein at that time and learnt that I was lactose intolerant. My point is lactose intolerance doesn't have to be all or nothing.

michael1999 5y ago

It’s so beneficial for pastoral populations, it arose several times in distant populations. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactase_persistence https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactase_persistence