General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Do Kids Really Need Milk with their Meal ? [View all]Hekate
(90,674 posts)Many centuries. So I'm guessing most Irish, English, Danes, Norwegians, etc are lactose tolerant. Then there's the folks in the Indian subcontinent, and they also use dairy. Cattle are wealth in Botswana, so they must do something with the milk, but I have not studied it.
A lot of folks start out lactose tolerant as children, but outgrow it so to speak. My husband and his late mother are both lactose intolerant, but this came on in adulthood. That's common in those of Eastern European Jewish ancestry.
A century ago nutrition guidelines for American children addressed known causes of malnutrition. Many children had ricketts, which stunts growth and causes malformed bones, including bow legs. Whole milk, with its Vitamin D and calcium, prevents this. Farmers' children were not exempt from ricketts, because if their parents were poor they often skimmed the cream off all the milk, even that for the household, in order to sell butter and cream; skim milk has little or no Vitamin D as it is a fat soluble vitamin.
Liking milk in adulthood is a personal preference, and handy for vegetarians, but lactose intolerance is a known thing in adults, and nearly always linked to specific ancestry. It was less known in the US before our population became so much more diverse.