Quote:
Originally Posted by Free Rider  As it turns out, people of Asian descent have a high probability of being lactose-intolerant. People from Scandinavia, on the other hand, have a very low probability of being lactose-intolerant.
It is interesting, therefore, that the advice to give up dairy came from a Chinese naturopath.  |
Well, don;t confuse "lactose intolerance" which gives digestive problems with dairy food's supposed connection to mucus. "Milk makes mucus" is a belief that comes from the middle ages in europe, and probably ultimately from asia, who knows. In any case, it derives from a view of the body as being composed of "four humours" one being phlegm, supposedly induced by milk. I believe the chinese system is not exactly the same but quite similar. Anyway, i don't get the impression that either chinese or medieval europeans were all that healthy.
But anyway, controlled trials repeatedly show that there is no connection between milk consumption and mucus production.
As for asian people being more lactose intolerant, what i read is that if you don;t drink milk, you lose the ability to digest it, and if you drink a lot, your body produces the necessary enzymes. Since milk is not part of most asian diets (with exceptions, like india) then naturally the people growing up with that diet would not be able to digest milk.
As for the life expectancy of 105, please! I don;t think the majority of chinese have such long lives, and milk is pretty much not part of the diet in most areas of china. I believe i read that the longest-living populations are italians, japanese and finnish - one thing they DON'T have in common is milk consumption. In fact, they have hardly anything in common.
Go figure.