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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

The dairy industry was already in trouble. Milk consumption is declining. Frantic efforts to add cheese to everything seem to have reached some limit. New studies indicate that adults should not have more than two servings of dairy products per day. Lactose intolerance is rising in the US population.

Now this.

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> Lactose intolerance is rising in the US population

Isn't it just the logical consequence of non-European immigration? AFAIK lactose intolerance is a pretty well-known phenomenon (unlike gluten): mamals are lactose intolerant after weaning, and as such most humans are so. There exist a few places (northern Europe, subsaharian Africa, southern? India, somewhere in the middle East) where the same kind of nonsense mutation on the gene responsible for weaning appeared, so people from there are usually lactose tolerant even after being weaned. The more people not coming from there there is in your population, the less lactose tolerant your population will be.

Edit: incorrect english wording

> severed

What does this mean in the context you're using it?

weaning is what I meant. I didn't know that word and because severing is really close to sevrage (the French word) and semantically close to it, I assumed it meant the same while writing and only realized it was incorrect when I checked after pressing the reply button. My bad.

You can consume milk happily for decades, then stop or drastically reduce your intake, and then every time you consume a bit too much you get diarrhea.

In most cultures with a majority of lactose tolerant people, there's a lot of lactose in everyday food, so people missing the mutation usually never complete their weaning before long in adulthood, when for some reason they “stop or drastically reduce [their] intake”.

Unless you know for sure that you have the mutation, stopping drinking milk or consuming dairies at some point in your life comes with a risk of not being able to drink milk ever again in your life. (I don't mean that going vegan is bad or anything, but I wish people knew it can come with a bigger commitment that what you may expect)

That sure isn't how my lactose intolerance went. I stopped drinking milk as a child because it became unpleasant and as an adult have no trouble eating the many dairy products that don't have a lot of lactose (cheese, yogurt, etc).

New studies indicate that adults should not have more than two servings of dairy products per day.

Citation needed.

Dairy is best avoided altogether.

It's the most common allergen. Even in smallest amounts it's inflammatory even in those without obvious IgE allergy (tests for allergies are notoriously imprecise, even things like RAST and in-vitro lymphocyte stimulation).

There's emerging evidence that consumption of Neu5Gc, a sialic acid that coats non-human mammalian proteins, is a cause of chronic inflammation in humans:

1. Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-Glycolylneuraminic_acid#Effe...

2. MedCram: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRkRilP1OTU

very interesting. how did you come by this?

MedCram is the best source of medical information on YouTube intended for a med school level audience. All of their videos are superb. I watch all their videos :)

> Lactose intolerance is rising in the US population.

Is that not largely due to the change in ethnic composition? (And a fairly slight effect at that)

I'd also like to see those studies of yours. And I wonder if that accounts for lactase persistent people like me, and accounts for a more healthy population because the saturated fats of milk is probably more harmful to an already more overweight group.

"now this" is a good thing that is happening. The dairy industry (mega farms) pollute like few others and with the way they treat animals it is good if that entire industry can be replaced by something else. The farming industry also receives billion upon billions in farm subsidies (at least in the EU). Money that can be saved when the farms has gone out of business.

>Frantic efforts to add cheese to everything seem to have reached some limit.

Good. It's remarkable how much cheese is included in restaurant meals. If you want to avoid it then it narrows the choice substantially.

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