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From: crm@rti.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.cooks
Subject: lactose
Message-ID: <1141@rti.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 8-Jan-84 13:53:46 EST
Article-I.D.: rti.1141
Posted: Sun Jan  8 13:53:46 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 9-Jan-84 04:46:12 EST
Lines: 24

Lactose intolerance is NOT uncommon -- in fact, about 75% of mankind does
not tolerate lactose at all well after the age of about ten months to
one year.  The reason that is seems not common to people in the US is
that northern Europeans are the group with the highest incedence of
lactose *tolerance*, (something like 96%, but I don't have the books at
hand.)

This all puts a little different light on all those programs that used
to be aimed at putting milk in the mouths of little Third World abaes,
doesn't it?  In fact, one of the reasons that this was discovered is
that the children who were getting the milk seemed to have an untoward
incidence of diarrhea and similar digestive problems.

Cooked milk -- really cooked, not pasteurized -- is easier to tolerate
(being lactose intolerant myself, I am learning these things) but still
has at least some lactose.

As far as why the body can't handle pasteurized milk as well as raw OR
cooked milk, I dunno -- but it seems plausible that the heat-induced
protein changes could cause the bonds that our enzymes attack to be
changed some how, at a lower temperature/shorter time than the changes
induced by cooking.

In fact, I wonder how our bodies learned to tolerate cooked food at all?