Yogurt/kefir occupies very large segments in most developed countries' grocery store shelves and new brands/varieties pop up every year. How has this industry not collapsed if "a lot of people outright refuse yogurt" according to you?
The development and marketing of lactose free dairy products in recent years is simply the dairy industry exploring new market segments, because substantial portions of the population do not have lactase persistence. Even societies whose culinary traditions involved heavy consumption of dairy do not have 100% lactase persistence. It's not some weird conspiracy aimed at making modern humans "weak". The lack of lactose is not significant enough to change the nutritional content of dairy products.
I'd be interested in knowing how asdff arrived at the idea that a sizable portion of lactose intolerance comes from people neglecting to fertilize their microbes with sauerkraut, pickled cabbage, or yogurt.
PS: I also learned while writing this I can't spell yogurt. Thanks spellchecker!
As for the spelling of yoghurt there's no correct version honestly, they are all transliterations of the same Turkish word https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yogurt#Etymology_and_spelling
Fully agreed. I appreciate the stern yet information-laden correction. It's certainly much better than hearing specious claims based on conjecture/misinformation that only seems plausible to the uninformed.
Also, IMO it did not sound "over-the-top" or "aggressive" at all. Some people are just so absurdly oversensitive that a simply direct method of speaking (or in this case, writing) is taken as hostile.
> Koreans eat lots of fermented vegetables, yet why are 70%-100% of Koreans estimated to be lactose intolerant?
On the other hand, there is Mongolia:
> But a closer look at cultural practices around the world has challenged that picture. In modern Mongolia, for example, traditional herders get more than a third of their calories from dairy products. They milk seven kinds of mammals, yielding diverse cheeses, yogurts, and other fermented milk products, including alcohol made from mare's milk. “If you can milk it, they do in Mongolia,” Warinner says. And yet 95% of those people are lactose intolerant.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.362.6415.626
Even though most products are fermented for shelf life, unfermented milk is widely consumed by Mongolians to this day.
It doesn't, but I think it indicates that genetic lactase persistence is not the only factor that affects lactose intolerance. Otherwise, how do you call a lactose-intolerant person that can tolerate significant amounts of lactose?
Are lactose intolerance symptoms widespread among Mongolians? If not, and if Mongolians are really genetically lactose intolerant, then it is worth asking whether the fermented dairy foods (as opposed to kimchi) they consume are mitigating that intolerance.
Considering I know nothing about this, and you seem like you do, are there any studies that looked at links between lactose intolerance and fresh milk produce?
Reason I say “fresh” is because we never refrigerated the milk. In the morning you get milk, cream is taken off top, by next morning you have a kefir like drink. All was consumed. There was no processing.
I know there is a study[0] that link exposure to farm animals being linked to less allergic reactions but never seen anything about milk.
Lactose intolerance in many cases also doesn't have a clear cut threshold nor is it common to be hypersensitive where a single drop of milk causes projectile vomitting. Many people who are technically lactose intolerant (as in they don't self product lactase in adulthood) can consume some amount of dairy without any symptoms. Otherwise dairy products such as milk, yogurt, and ice cream would not have existed in most of Asia.
https://www.journalofdairyscience.org/article/S0022-0302(87)...
>"However, when lactose loads of up to 12 g are fed, symptoms can be minimal or absent." >"Tolerance to yogurt, acidophilus milk, and other microbe-containing dairy foods has been suggested and is thought to be due to either a low lactose content or in vivo autodigestion by microbial β-galactosidase."
Always makes my eyes roll when I hear people driving hours just to get fresh farm milk.
I didn’t know that type-1 diabetes was an autoimmune disease.
This isn't new, and certainly isn't some crisis of the last 100 years. Historically only a minority of the planet has ever been lactase persistent into adulthood. It's a well-understood genetic trait, not some product of gut microbes.
What's the separate mechanism? I'm only aware of one set of genes coding for adult lactase production.
Also a possible reason for why people have different taste preferences.
Humans are odd in that we harvest milk for consumption at all beyond our own mother's, which is probably why we're the only species with a notable population with the genetic mutation that allows some of us to digest it – there's no competitive advantage to that mutation in most other mammals, because where would they even obtain milk?
Lactose intolerance is normal, but for a few people, presumably dairy animal farmers, something happened to their genes and they became tolerant, and it was an evolutionary avantage because they had access to all that milk. But because access to farmed milk is relatively recent from an evolutionary standpoint and people can live with lactose intolerance, the trait hasn't spread to all of humanity.
Lactase (the enzyme that breaks down lactose) production is regulated by a human gene; how would a probiotic like yogurt alter a gene?
Just spitballing, this is pure speculation, but is plausible.
I don't know any specific data whatsoever about inducing lactase, but it seems perfectly plausible that microorganisms such as lactic acid bacteria could interact with the system.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6669050/
> Studies that have measured changes in endogenous lactase activity after an intervention period consistently show a lack of enzyme induction, suggesting that lactose intake does not affect an individual's lactase activity. Although these studies are scarce and have relatively few subjects, data from cross-sectional studies support the theory of purely genetic regulation
What I was speculating about though, and what may be more relevant for the (Science) article, also includes things along the lines of a microbe manipulating the host gene expression to improve its living conditions. For instance a species that derives energy by fermenting glucose to lactate might under certain conditions have better benefit from that piece of metabolism if it can also make the host act as a sink for the product.
Again, not sure if that particular example is real or documented, but the idea has some consequences for the sort of adaptations and connections one might find.
https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/condition/lactose-intoleran...
You just either get the right genes or you don’t. I’m curious as to how long into my life I’ll be able to drink straight cow milk and be fine. Still got a bit of experimental time left. Hopefully, anyway.
Also both my parents can drink milk without issues.
The negative symptoms of lactose intolerance is exactly due to microbes in the gut digesting lactose and producing metabolic byproducts such as gas. People who aren't lactose intolerant are free of such symptoms because lactose is digested with enzymes produced by the body before it reaches the gut thus depriving gut microbes of sufficient quantities of lactose to cause negative symptoms.
That's what ruminents do anyways, you need a steady colony of these helpful bacteria or you lose the tolerance. While that seems troublesome, for many animals that's how metabolism works for their entire life.
[citation needed]. It seems unlikely that fermented foods are not consumed in urban areas at all. I’ve also no idea if other primates consume any fermented foods, but I’d guess probably not.
> People are becoming even lactose intolerant
Do any other primates drink milk after infancy? If not, that’s not really a valid concern in the context of the article.
I would be curious to see if you took, say, South Korean cities, what the results would be. (Seoul is one of the largest megacities in the world, and kimchi is an extremely common fermented food.)
To the typical North American diet it tastes incredibly foreign because the US of A is drenched in sweeteners.
But unsweetened foods just taste beautiful once you get used to them.
You could posit this argument about anything we consume. Spinach leaves are to provide energy through photosynthesis for the spinach plant, and technically should not be suitable by consumption by adult humans so to speak if we took your logic to the limit. The fact that we have experienced gain of function mutations that allow us to digest spinach and recieve some nutrient benefit from it mean that we are able to take advantage of this resource. Milk in this sense is no different, even if not all of the human population has recieved this gain of function mutation of lactase persistance.
In biology there is no 'suitable' or not especially in the human sense of things being properly defined into discrete categories of expected outcomes, only what is physically posible through thermodynamics. If you physically can extract energy from plants, meat, milk, dirt, whatever, then its all suitable for consumption. having an enzyme to digest this sugar is no different than having teeth fit to grind down fibrous plant matter, or teeth strong and sharp enough to cut through cartilage and sinew.
To say that humans can take nutrition from a substance is an argument that there is no criticism of the substance is a bad argument. Humans take energy from pure sugar, or taco bell. Yet to claim they are beyond criticism because they can keep people alive is absurd.
Whence this transcendent purpose that limits suitability? Likewise, quinoa grains are to grow into full-sized plants, and not for consumption by humans, etc. etc.
Most people may be "lactose intolerant", but some of them find ways to survive and thrive on milk-based foods; meanwhile, some populations have developed tolerance to lactose, presumably because milk-based foods are important.
Yes, some northern European peoples have evolved to be more tolerant of milk. And some tibetans have evolved to live at very high altitudes. It's not a good argument to take a small exceptional population and apply that reasoning to the general case.
And this doesn't even get into all the problems with the dairy industry with regards to environmental damage and animal suffering.
And on the other hand, I think there is this false logic at play with the meat/dairy industry as a whole. People assume these interconnected systems are in fact discrete. That we could do away with eating meat and suffer no consequences, in fact even see improvement in our ways of life. I am not so optimistic given how interconnected systems are. For instance, take the cow. Its not just used to derive meat. 99% of the cow is used. The pancreas is used to extract insulin and other factors. Same with the liver, and the pituitary gland. Serum is used for biomedical research applications. The hair is used for products, the hide is used. The fats are used for everything from toothpaste to flooring to crayons. Collagen and gelatin are extracted. I don't even need to go into the uses of the hide, I feel. The bones and blood are used for organic fertilizer, so I'd wager that many organic vegetarian products today actually rely on the cheap organic fertilizers produced by the meat industry versus synthetic sources. On top of that pasture land is often land that is not compatible for traditonal farming, owing to terrain mostly (e.g. Summit county in Colorado sports a lot of ranching versus farming, due to the rocky mountainous terrain being almost impossible to plow but trivial for a grazer to roam on).
Could you replace all of the parts of the cow with synthetic sources? Certainly. Would this lead to a net reduction in greenhouse gasses and other environmental externalities replacing each and every of these products with synthetic sources that hopefully aren't any more costly? That I doubt, and it worries me that headlines and other material in the media seem to ignore how all these externalizes will be resolved, assuming it will be an easy transition.
Are you claiming that most people who consume milk as a major part of their diet suffer health problems from it? Or that grain-based diets do not cause health issues?
> That is because we've evolved for a orders of magnitude longer to eat plant material.
Evolution has no telos. Evolutionary leaps into new niches are the norm, and hunting had formative impacts on the evolution of modern humans. We've also evolved for orders of magnitude longer walking on all fours (and walking erect causes health issues, such as stressing the back), but that has no bearing on what is healthy or suitable.
> It's not a good argument to take a small exceptional population and apply that reasoning to the general case.
I don't believe I did so. Northern European-origin populations are not small or insignificant, but I agree that for lactose-intolerant populations who have no tradition of using milk-based foods they are generally nutritionally unnecessary.
Not sure what you mean about telos. Evolution informs us about why we eat what we eat and how we might be affected by various foods, but it does not control us. We can choose what we want to eat.
Assuming alternative sources of the same essential nutrients, I agree – no single food is nutritionally necessary or ever was. In the real world, meanwhile, dairy products are a key source of protein etc. for people in at least some regions where sufficient alternative sources are not widely affordable or available. Certainly, milk was crucial to the survival of many populations as recently as a century ago (not "aeons ago during some ancient famine").
> Evolution informs us about why we eat what we eat and how we might be affected by various foods
Evolution is an open-ended history of accidents, with much to say about what works for us (as opposed to what cannot).
> but it does not control us.
Indeed. Not only does it not control us, we cannot even conclude based on it that a novel environment or resource will not be advantageous. In the case of ungulate milk consumption, it turns out it was.
> Not sure what you mean about telos.
Evolutionary adaptations are in the nature of accidents, not guided by any purpose or implying any optimal "natural" state. Populations taking advantage of accidental fitness for new niches is a defining pattern in the evolution of life on earth, and consumption of milk by some human populations fits that pattern. Drawing conclusions about the suitability of drinking milk because "we didn't evolve to drink it" is fallacious (in contrast to, say, explaining most people's lack of lactase persistence by their ancestors' non-consumption of milk, which is sound, non-teleological reasoning).
I read something years ago about how as the Japanese population adapted a more western diet, heaps of ailments came upon them as you’d expect, but their salt intake declined so dramatically that they stopped experiencing stroke and GI tract cancers nearly as much.
I think you’d need to pin down just how much salt was causing those issues though and then ask if the benefits of the salty fermented foods outweigh the current problem of having depleted gut microbiomes and atrocious diets.
So, I’m certainly not suggesting everyone avoid salty fermented foods. I eat (and make) a fair amount myself and as I alluded above, I suspect it’s better for me than eating food that is, on balance, worse for me.
There’s no perfect diet, but there are clearly worse diets. I try to avoid the latter.
[1] https://www.clinicalnutritionjournal.com/article/S0261-5614(...
> Reduction of processed meat intake may be an effective strategy for CRC prevention, while sodium reduction should still be recommended to achieve other health benefits.
Apart from that, I’m still seeing evidence of correlation with stomach cancer, even if not in the lower GI tract:
https://www.wcrf.org/salt-shaking-up-the-link-with-stomach-c...
Given the connection to stomach cancer and cardiovascular disease, it does seem wise to be careful about salt intake.
Regarding west African diets, are they high in salted fermented foods or just fermented foods? It seems if the food is low in salt, it’s probably just fine
The evidence for this seems much less conclusive than most people think: https://examine.com/nutrition/awful-nutrition-myths/#summary.... The tl;dr is that most of that salt comes from crappy food, and that’s what you want to fix - it’s not the salt as such.
> Some myths contain a grain of truth. Studies have associated excess salt with hypertension (high blood pressure),[54] kidney damage,[55] and an increased risk of cognitive decline.[56][5
The thing is, a lot of people have no idea that their salt intake is way too high. You’re right that the salt tends to come from processed foods, but the salt is still a problem.
I’m not trying to suggest the processed foods are not a problem, either. It’s a compounding problem, and it’s a massive one.
But a drastic decrease in salt intake has not shown uniform benefit in clinical trials. Most people will benefit more from a diet of mostly unprocessed foods than from micromanaging their salt intake.
As an example, salt-sensitive hypertension is a condition which some people have, but most people don't. If you don't, then salt will generally not affect your blood pressure adversely (it will go up temporarily if you eat a whole Domino's pizza, but will quickly go down again).
https://nutritionfacts.org/audio/the-sodium-debate/
My take away from this and other sources is that we don’t have proper long-term, randomized, human trials to determine exactly what to say about this. At the same time, there are cases where a reduction is clearly helpful but no typical cases where an increase is beneficial.
I’m certainly not out to debate or disprove you here — I’d really like to eat more salt, but the evidence I come across doesn’t justify it. I’d rather be wrong, though.
https://www.newser.com/story/119965/so-do-pickles-really-cau...
I linked to an article pointing to heavily salted, preserved foods being correlated with stomach cancer in a response to another comment. Though salted fermented foods fall into this category, so would things like jerky or salted olives for example. It isn’t clear to me what should be avoided necessarily, though it seems like decreasing sodium intake is a net positive regardless.
In any case, I think eating these foods is likely okay or even healthful so long as it doesn’t make up a large part of your diet.