Monday, December 11, 2006

Evolution of lactose tolerance

It's now being found out when the genetic advantage to drinking milk evolved.

There are many, many web sites out there that will tell you not to drink Milk, for various reasons. If I think about it, yea, it is kinda weird to drink cow-juice... but any more weird than to eat any animal-product? I honestly think the vegans probably are eating closer to what humans historically evolved to eat, and are probably healthier for it, but I'm not vigilant enough (read: I'm lazy, I admit it) to watch my food intake in such a way.

Being of European decent, my mom & grandmom are both lactose-intolerant. My mom only became Lactose-intolerant after I was born. I'm not sure about myself, I haven't always had the happiest tummy, and I've mostly cut out drinking glasses of milk, but my stomach seems to handle milk-products (cheese, sour cream, ice-cream) just fine so far. I wonder if I'll stay that way.

1 Comments:

Blogger Amanda said...

I really enjoyed the article- it's nifty to have examples of recent evolution to throw around with all the more distant instances.

I'm not sure why or how it works, but I've heard that even those who are lactose tolerant can become lactose intolerant after not not consuming milk for an extended period of time. I was vegan for about eight years, and when I devolved (or something like that) back into just a vegetarian almost two years ago, I found that my stomach can only handle highly processed milk products. Glasses of milk are out. Cheese is fine. Ice cream doesn't work. Yogurt is okay.

8:47 PM  

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