Coach85 Coach85:
We need to move away from the notion that dairy is necessary for everyone regardless of age. It's not.
Yeah I think it’s weird too.
Humans, like all mammals, are naturally lactose intolerant after infancy. We are also the only creatures in the history of this planet to consume the milk of another creature.
That said, I eat dairy and give my kid milk because it’s convenient source of nutrition.
One of my areas of interest lately has been Neolithic and Bronze Age history. The feature that allows humans to consume dairy into adulthood is called lactase persistence and was never more than a rare random mutation but appears to have become a deliberately selected trait long after the advent of farming. In Europe the trait seems to correlate to the invasion of nomadic horse-riding herders who invaded from the Eurasian steppes in the Copper Age, ca 3500 BCE and subjugated then interbred with the local North and Central European crop farmers. In northern latitudes where there’s less sunlight especially UVB, there’s less opportunity for the body to manufacture vitamin D (which comes from UVB sunlight interacting with exposed skin) and so those able to digest the vitamin D rich dairy would presumably have been healthier, stronger and more desirable mates (for this same reason, it’s thought light skin also became prevalent in the north). Herders in Africa also developed their own genetic mutation for lactose tolerance although probably for other nutritional benefits such as calcium rather than Vitamin D because UVB light is abundant in those latitudes.
That’s my unsolicited info for the day.