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Holy shit, that is the most over-the-top, aggressive response to a guy being factually incorrect about yoghurt that I've ever read.

Can you point exactly which part was "over-the-top" or "aggressive"? Or is calling out that factually incorrect things are, well, factually incorrect somehow unacceptable nowadays? The world needs less pseudoscience misinfo, not more.

I re-read your post and while it's not overly aggressive it's the difference in tone and approach that get you. The original poster was like the hippie encouraging home-made yogurt and you were like the school principal saying 'this is bull, store yogurt has scientifically the same benefits'.

PS: I also learned while writing this I can't spell yogurt. Thanks spellchecker!

Sadly the topic of lactose intolerance is rife with misinfo, biases, and dogwhistles, hence my rapid-fire questions in the previous comment. Most commercial yogurt products sold in grocery stores today are heavily laden with sugar and so mildly fermented that their probiotic quanlities are nearly nullified. Commercial unflavoured kefir is slightly better, but the overall probiotic effect is still questionable since we don't have affirmative answers on how much of the microbes can survive through our stomach acid, or how much of them can establish in our guts vs. heading straight for the exit like passengers on a roller coaster.

As for the spelling of yoghurt there's no correct version honestly, they are all transliterations of the same Turkish word https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yogurt#Etymology_and_spelling

The majority of nutritional science seems full of bullshit to be honest. I remember how we laughed at the Atkins diet when it first appeared as well all knew so well that the science told us fat was bad. Now Keto diet seems to be gaining a lot of acceptance, and refined sugar is the real enemy. Refined sugar being bad for you seems to be one of the few things that is agreed on. Will that change in another 20 years?

If you are worried about people's tone and approach, go over to 4chan for a bit then come back here. It should toughen you up.

I'm not worried at all. I was just commenting why others may see that comment (not mine) overly aggressive.

> The world needs less pseudoscience misinfo, not more.

Fully agreed. I appreciate the stern yet information-laden correction. It's certainly much better than hearing specious claims based on conjecture/misinformation that only seems plausible to the uninformed.

Also, IMO it did not sound "over-the-top" or "aggressive" at all. Some people are just so absurdly oversensitive that a simply direct method of speaking (or in this case, writing) is taken as hostile.

the "It's not some weird conspiracy aimed at making modern humans "weak"." bit seemed a bit much (and out of nowhere unless there was an edit in the original)

The insinuation in the very original comment that modern humans are abandoning fermented foods en masse and "even becoming" lactose intolerant (as if adulthood lactose intolerance is somehow a new condition rather than the default for pretty much all mammals in existence) was clearly in-line with the pseudoscientific conspiracist misinformation wave that modern lifestyle supported by technological advances is making humans regress somehow, rather than elevating overall levels of health and turning previous morbidity factors into manageable nuisances.

Yet they are all reasonable questions.

I'd be interested in knowing how asdff arrived at the idea that a sizable portion of lactose intolerance comes from people neglecting to fertilize their microbes with sauerkraut, pickled cabbage, or yogurt.

> Lactase persistence is regulated by genetic mutations, not gut microbes.

> Koreans eat lots of fermented vegetables, yet why are 70%-100% of Koreans estimated to be lactose intolerant?

On the other hand, there is Mongolia:

> But a closer look at cultural practices around the world has challenged that picture. In modern Mongolia, for example, traditional herders get more than a third of their calories from dairy products. They milk seven kinds of mammals, yielding diverse cheeses, yogurts, and other fermented milk products, including alcohol made from mare's milk. “If you can milk it, they do in Mongolia,” Warinner says. And yet 95% of those people are lactose intolerant.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.362.6415.626

Even though most products are fermented for shelf life, unfermented milk is widely consumed by Mongolians to this day.

So how exactly does the diet of Mongolians prove lactase persistence is not fundamentally genetic? Lactose intolerance isn't something like celiacs where a dash of the substance causes adverse reactions. Most of Asia still sell non-lactose-free dairy in supermarkets. Look up any Youtube video of Korean street foods and you will see dairy products such as processed cheese, yogurt, mil, and ice cream are ubiquitous in Korea. That doesn't detract from the fact that the vast majority of the population are lactose intolerant in the definition that they no longer produce enzymes that can break down lactose once reaching adulthood.

Yeah and none of the foods on the list was raw unfermented milk.

> So how exactly does the diet of Mongolians prove lactase persistence is not fundamentally genetic?

It doesn't, but I think it indicates that genetic lactase persistence is not the only factor that affects lactose intolerance. Otherwise, how do you call a lactose-intolerant person that can tolerate significant amounts of lactose?

Koreans don't get a third of their calories from dairy products, though. Whereas if Mongolians get ~30% of their calories from dairy on average (which is credible), that would mean they are getting far more than that in summer, since dairy consumption is largely seasonal. We're talking prodigious amounts by the standards of any culture, not a dash. That consumption includes both significant unfermented dairy (milk, milk tea, clotted cream) and dairy products fermented in a wide variety of ways.

Are lactose intolerance symptoms widespread among Mongolians? If not, and if Mongolians are really genetically lactose intolerant, then it is worth asking whether the fermented dairy foods (as opposed to kimchi) they consume are mitigating that intolerance.

Honest question: I grew up on a farm in former USSR. We milked cows daily, when I was a kid. Back then, I never knew about lactose intolerance but to be fair, this wasn’t a topic discussed.

Considering I know nothing about this, and you seem like you do, are there any studies that looked at links between lactose intolerance and fresh milk produce?

Reason I say “fresh” is because we never refrigerated the milk. In the morning you get milk, cream is taken off top, by next morning you have a kefir like drink. All was consumed. There was no processing.

I know there is a study[0] that link exposure to farm animals being linked to less allergic reactions but never seen anything about milk.

[0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7744242/

Fermented milk is lower in lactose because some of the lactose have already been broken down by microbes in the fermentation process. https://www.webmd.com/allergies/news/20030530/kefir-helps-la...

Lactose intolerance in many cases also doesn't have a clear cut threshold nor is it common to be hypersensitive where a single drop of milk causes projectile vomitting. Many people who are technically lactose intolerant (as in they don't self product lactase in adulthood) can consume some amount of dairy without any symptoms. Otherwise dairy products such as milk, yogurt, and ice cream would not have existed in most of Asia.

https://www.journalofdairyscience.org/article/S0022-0302(87)...

>"However, when lactose loads of up to 12 g are fed, symptoms can be minimal or absent." >"Tolerance to yogurt, acidophilus milk, and other microbe-containing dairy foods has been suggested and is thought to be due to either a low lactose content or in vivo autodigestion by microbial β-galactosidase."

Fresh milk is linked with some viruses that can cause autoimmune diseases like type-1 diabetes and bunch of other stuff.

Always makes my eyes roll when I hear people driving hours just to get fresh farm milk.

Thanks!

I didn’t know that type-1 diabetes was an autoimmune disease.

Would you be able to recommend a yogurt brand I could try out solely for the gut-related health benefits? Or if not yogurt specifically, anything that might even be better.

Highly dependent on what local brands are available. Look for unflavoured kefir or plain yogurt that isn't 0% fat.

I developed lactose intolerance sometime during the 5 years I lived in Japan. I only noticed after returning to Canada when I resumed my old diet. I can still generally eat yogurt and kefir without symptoms, but I can't drink milk anymore without taking lactase tablets.