Why are so many people in the world unable to digest lactose?
In: Biology
Okay so like, humans back in the day really only drank milk as babies. We evolved to be able to digest lactose as babies and then as we grow up, we stop drinking mom’s milk and we stop needing to spend precious resources making lactose digesting enzymes that we didn’t use. Things were real rough before agriculture really took off.
In cultures where humans *raised dairy livestock* (like European cultures), you see really low levels of lactose intolerance. This is because children, teenagers, and adults who could eat milk had a new food source to them! Cows (goats, etc) can turn water and grass into nutritious milk! So people who could eat dairy products lived and those who couldn’t died from a mixture of having less food at their disposal and wasting all their good nutrients when they experience vomiting and diarrhea from their force fed dairy products.
In cultures where humans *didn’t raise dairy livestock*, we see much higher levels of lactose intolerance. This is because their ancestors were not reliant on dairy as a nutritional source and didn’t need to keep the lactase genes running after childhood, so they continued as is. After all, if it ain’t broke, nature ain’t gonna fix it.
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