Does ancestry play a part in what foods agree with you?

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #21

Mammals lose the ability to digest lactose after infancy. The body stops producing the enzyme, lactase, that digests lactose. I don’t know whether it’s because it gives an evolutionary advantage, or if there is simply no evolutionary disadvantage.

So lactose-intolerance in adulthood is actually the human default, too. And somehow researchers have managed to demonstrate that the northern European ability to digest lactose in adulthood and the Maasai ability to do the same are the results of two separate mutations. In either case, given the circumstances of both peoples, there is an advantage to being able to continue eating dairy in adulthood. But whether the mutation occurred first and allowed people to eat the food, or whether people were trying to eat the food and some developed the mutation and thrived better, is an open question.

(Bob M) #22

My guess for the Europeans is that there were reasons in place that people had to eat dairy, so natural selection furthered that. Cheese making, for instance, goes back a while:

Cheese is a good food because it’s a concentrated source of calories, relatively high in protein, and can be stored.

That’s my best guess anyway.

For the Maasai, I have no idea what happened there.

(M) #23

one thing different about dairy from back then is that it wasn’t heated. Do you think pasteurization makes a big difference in digestion of cheese and butter ?

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #24

No, but it makes a big difference in taste. My cousins who were dairy farmers couldn’t drink the store-bought milk we had in the city, because it tasted wrong. (Nowadays, none of them keeps cows anymore, and they get their milk from the supermarket, like everyone else.)

(Peter - Don't Fear the Fat ) #25

You can get ‘Raw’ milk in London (Borough Market) It’s costs a bomb and I’ve never tried it.
I know some French cheese makers prize the raw version.
I do know a river caught trout taste way different than a farmed one… but that’s a whole different subject.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #26

It’s possible to make cheese and yoghurt from pasteurised milk, but it’s easier to start with raw milk.

Ultra-pasteurised or shelf-stable–forget it!

#27

I have drunk supermarket milk as a kid and I was okay with it but I always strongly preferred raw milk as it tastes way better to me.
Now I drink both, we buy raw milk from a dairy drunk every week, it’s usually significantly cheaper than the cheapest on sale supermarket one (only non-UHT, not low-fat milk counts. low-fat is 1.5% to me, we barely have anything lower) :smiley: But the truck is only there for an hour per week and we only have a single milk bottle. Drinking milk is still somewhat new to me and I love it so 0.6dl per week (my SO uses the rest for his pudding) just isn’t enough for me, not even if I consume 1.5-2dl cream per week as well (I don’t want to go higher than that).
I think the truck has a note on it that we should pasteurize raw milk, such places usually say that and I definitely never considered the thing, I am glad I get nice raw milk, won’t half-ruin it!

It isn’t fatty milk, it feels about 2.8% as normal supermarket milk. I have drunk fattier raw milk, that was good… And there is 3.5-3.6% supermarket milk, that was nice too but 2.8 already works and is more available and cheaper. I am fine with 2.8% milk and 30% cream most of the time. I would be happier with raw cream (or whatever but no UHT) but I got used to the only, UHT option I have. The dairy truck has no cream.

Of course, the best cow milk I have drunk was the still warm, foamy wonderfulness from the neighbour where I witnessed the milking… They had the best pork sausage too. I have spent a lot of nice time there.

(Bob M) #28

Listened to a podcast with a woman making yogurt using raw milk. (She does a low-temperature, long time pasteurization process on the yogurt, though, to be able to sell it.) She uses raw milk from only Jersey cows, as she said that these cows produce way more cream.

I think this is true. I was getting raw milk from only Jersey cows for a while, and it had a ton of cream on it. I now get raw milk from a combination of Jersey and Holstein cows, and it has nowhere near the cream of the Jersey-only cows.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #29

Yeah, different breeds produce different milk. The breed you’ll raise depends on the milk you want to produce. And meat animals involve a whole different set of considerations, naturally.

(Bob M) #30

Also, Jersey cows are “old school”, so they produce milk with only A2 proteins. They supposedly produce less milk, though, than Holsteins (which produce A1/A2 milk, I think).

Found this, for instance:

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This is for a senior project about profitability, though.

https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?httpsredir=1&article=1080&context=dscisp

As always, everything is complex, because the results section on page 20 has so many factors, I’m not sure what the conclusion is. :wink:

#31

We got our milk fresh from the cow, as the family did for many generations. It was boiled before drinking and formed a skin on top that was the most delicious part, we kids fought over it.

There was a guy in town we called “the cheeser”. For generations his family had processed the town’s milk into cheese. He had a room full of huge wheels of a variety of cheeses. Cow owners dropped their milk off there daily and picked up cheese in turn in the fall.

When I grew up, there were always chunks of cheese in the fridge and those we were allowed to snack on between meals.

Cheese was a central food over the entire life times.

The cows were all the same, kept for generations and fully trained to go into the pasture and come home for milking on their own. Went to their personal stalls to be milked. In spring, they walked up into the mountain pastures, each herd followed their lead cow who wore a bell. They knew where to go. They stayed up there til fall. I have no idea what breed they may have been, they were just the cows that had lived there for many generations. Brown and white.

We had cowgirls (not boys) who went up to the pastures with the cows and had a little cottage there. Someone came by daily with a wagon to collect all the milk.

(Eve) #32

@KetoPescatarian potatoes are the worst thing for me too - a whole.baked potato drops my blood glucose through the floor and makes me feel ill! Such a shame as l love them…

(Peter - Don't Fear the Fat ) #33

7-10 spoons of sugar in a potato I’ve heard