Here in Scandihoovian Seattle, we are awash in milk and need not worry about such trivialities as lactose intolerance. Unfortunately, leftist drivel and pretentious coffee perversions are also integral to the ethnic mix. At least that gives us plenty to obsess about during the interminable rainy months (August 21st to July 17th.)

(It was probably some Rodale Press propaganda …I had an organic garden way before it became fashionable, and I read a lot of Rodale Press stuff; I was taught to garden by very frugal grandparents, who wer subscribers …and that bit may have been coupled to some National Geographic article … on long-lived Georgians? Whatever: it was so long ago I have only the memory of a memory.)

At any rate, it was enough incentive for me to learn to love the stuff.

At first, I could only find yoghurt in health food stores. A bit later in time, I actually learned to culture my own (yeah: I made yoghurt lol …I also had a sourdough starter that was probably 20 years old before I killed it), because it was kind of expensive.

This was way before the fruit-filled yoghurt cups (or about the same time) became widely available btw (I grew up in a small agricultural community in the Sacramento Valley, and spent even more years in an equal small seaside town on the north coast of California).

I went through a quart or so daily back then. I would eat it raw, over granola. In a “shake” form (with lots of stuff in it). Or plain with a teaspoon of honey, a dash of lecithin, and a 1/4 cup or so of wheat germ (which gave it a nutty flavor) mixed in.

…way back when, in my long-haired hippy-dippy days. When there were real hippys lol.

…gawd but I was such a tool lol.

The missing logical link is YOGURT.

It’s still loaded with enough lactose to trigger the ‘runs’ if you’re intolerant.

It’s idiot simple to make — even by accident.

And, it’s the natural culture to develop resistance to pathogens — in the same manner that a weakened virus pre-alerts our immune system.

THAT’S why milk culture — changed Western culture.

Duh.

The ancient Hebrews were hip to the pathogen connection — coming up with Kosher law. In this way, they were passed over for many pathogens — and never picked up lactose tolerance as a consequence.

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In one of history’s bitter ironies, Jews that survived the Black Death — because of their fastidious urban habits — became blame victims BECAUSE they were under-afflicted.

Paranoid Gentiles / atheists are recorded as having attacked and even murdered Jews in the 14th Century on the supposition that the pandemic was a Jewish plot.

This fantasy that European Jews have hidden powers/ operate a conspiracy is a recurrent theme in Western culture.

Just keeping a Kosher home became a social liability during plagues — of which Europe had no end of.

We see weird variations on this theme with Hugo Chavez telling some that his cancer was inflicted upon him by the evil Americans…

Or that America invented AIDS to make Africans suffer….

This is when mental health and body health fuse across the medical divide. Professionals have to keep the popular mind right while treating the epidemic.

This cross-problem deserves professional inquiry.

Neo?

“The irony is that the people who claim the greatest appreciation for evolution, are the one’s most likely to reject its principles.

They wield an article of faith, evolution as a description of origin, to delegitimize their competing interests, … while simultaneously rejecting its central, objective principle: evolutionary fitness.

If it is a conspiracy to genocide, then it is a self-inflicted outcome. It is the paradox of civilization. … dysfunctional behaviors are initially proscribed, but with the emergence of decadence, the members of a society enjoy an opportunity to wallow in retrogressive behaviors.

… they will either suffer progressive and, eventually, conclusive corruption, or will be conquered by an external force whose members retain a superior grasp of reality.”

This important description of a bizarre intellectual/moral dynamic has been made before, but not often enough, and bears repeating.

Of course the hedonic nihilists imagine that technical means will allow them to float above the consequences enjoined by the social laws of the past, and perhaps even enable them to mutate into something else entirely before the bill comes due. “Let the collector come. There will be no one home to pay.”

Maybe. But, what is it that they wish to be … and why?

And, well, what possible moral obligation could the conservative have toward such people, and on what basis?

Off topic, but I think there’s a good chance that agriculture was invented to ensure a steady supply of grain for brewing beer. Seriously.

In addition to the pleasant side effects from drinking beer, there was a practical aspect: The fermentation process killed disease organisms and made water safe to drink. Beer is mostly water, and this would have been an early form of water treatment.

Slate: The Most Spectacular Mutation in Recent Human History: How did milk help found Western civilization?

…Two hundred thousand years later, around 10,000 B.C., this began to change. A genetic mutation appeared, somewhere near modern-day Turkey, that jammed the lactase-production gene permanently in the “on” position. The original mutant was probably a male who passed the gene on to his children. People carrying the mutation could drink milk their entire lives. Genomic analyses have shown that within a few thousand years, at a rate that evolutionary biologists had thought impossibly rapid, this mutation spread throughout Eurasia, to Great Britain, Scandinavia, the Mediterranean, India and all points in between, stopping only at the Himalayas. Independently, other mutations for lactose tolerance arose in Africa and the Middle East, though not in the Americas, Australia, or the Far East.

In an evolutionary eye-blink, 80 percent of Europeans became milk-drinkers; in some populations, the proportion is close to 100 percent. (Though globally, lactose intolerance is the norm; around two-thirds of humans cannot drink milk in adulthood.) The speed of this transformation is one of the weirder mysteries in the story of human evolution, more so because it’s not clear why anybody needed the mutation to begin with. Through their cleverness, our lactose-intolerant forebears had already found a way to consume dairy without getting sick, irrespective of genetics

Definitely a “must read”.

Most cheeses don’t contain lactose! What’s happening when milk turns to cheese is a souring process called acidification, whereby the lactose in milk is converted into lactic acid. This is the magical fermentation process in cheesemaking, when a sugar – in this case, milk sugar, or lactose – is converted into something else – in this case, lactic acid, which happens to be an entirely different entity from lactose. By the time a cheese is made, most or all of the lactose that had been present in the milk no longer remains.

The longer that milk is left to sour, the greater the opportunity for all of that lactose to dissipate into lactic acid. A longer period of acidification allows the protein chains to form even stronger bonds, which will result in a firmer curd – and ultimately a firmer cheese that can age longer. Therefore, it’s the harder, drier, and more aged cheeses that will be the safest to eat if you’re lactose intolerant. Fresher cheeses that are higher in moisture may retain a small amount of lactose because the milk has not been left to ferment completely. People who are lactose intolerant may have issues with fresher styles.

Kim Jong Un