Can you learn to become lactose tolerant if you were intolerant before?

[silverpig]

Or in some cases, your digestive tract just seems to say, "Screw you." As I discovered, I incorporated a lot of dairy into my regular diet, including cereal+milk almost every morning. The lactose intolerance set in over the span of about two weeks. I thought it was some kind of infection or food poisoning, but thought of the lactose intolerance thing because my mom had problems with milk too. (She's the one who introduced a very skeptical me to the benefits of raw milk.)

There's one thing that sucks about drinking milk: Every time I have any, the thought arises that, "You're drinking a secretion from an evolution-modified sweat gland on a cow."

And if you leave it to rot for a while you get cheese!

 

[JohnOfSheffield]

And if you leave it to rot for a while you get cheese!

No you don't.

 

[Ninjahedge]

Ferment, but whatever.

As for the ones that decided that it was OK, well, we are looking at things from a different perspective.

If these critters nursed their young a lot like we did, why not try it and see if it is OK?


Completely OT, but I was thinking about how the hell we came up with other foodstuffs. Coffee and Tea being two big ones.

Who thought to take a leaf, dry it, crumble it, pour hot water on it and then DRINK it?

And Coffee? Take a bitter bean, roast it, grind it, soak it in hot water and then drink the water?

Chocolate is even one step further than that! I can see how someone sees milk coming from a cow and figures "why the hell not". 1 step process, but this other stuff?

 

[Jeff7]

And if you leave it to rot for a while you get cheese!

I mentioned something about this in a thread on some gross foods.

Milk went bad and got a bit chunky? Cottage cheese.
A little more? Yogurt.
Dried out and salty? Cheese.
Cheese got moldy? Blue cheese.
Cheese got maggoty? Casu marzu


(Yeah, I know it's not quite like that, but I do get the idea that a lot of foods came about due to the lack of refrigeration throughout most of our history.)

 

[Ninjahedge]

Mmmmm, beer.

 

[destrekor]

Ferment, but whatever.

As for the ones that decided that it was OK, well, we are looking at things from a different perspective.

If these critters nursed their young a lot like we did, why not try it and see if it is OK?


Completely OT, but I was thinking about how the hell we came up with other foodstuffs. Coffee and Tea being two big ones.

Who thought to take a leaf, dry it, crumble it, pour hot water on it and then DRINK it?

And Coffee? Take a bitter bean, roast it, grind it, soak it in hot water and then drink the water?

Chocolate is even one step further than that! I can see how someone sees milk coming from a cow and figures "why the hell not". 1 step process, but this other stuff?

You can take that thought-process and apply it to just about every single food out there.

All the various vegetables and plants, how people figured out which ones were good to eat and which ones are worthless or dangerous. And then, the process of cultivating it to have it available in large numbers.

But as far as the consumable commodities that we use for enjoyment, well, most of the ways of usage today is far different than original usage. We have filters and all these other methods, but originally, it was probably consumed raw, either ingested or chewed and then spat out.
The real fun thing to think about is how we discovered different drugs and made habits out of them. All things with caffeine and similar compounds were really discovered and used for that reason alone. Dressing them up and using them differently just became something to do - they originally just really liked the caffeine.

Chocolate edibles probably came a long time after the discovery of the awesomeness of cacao. They likely introduced cacao into other beverages to create drug-laced liquids, most likely alcoholic brews with cacao. Sweet chocolate was likely far after the first uses.

Like other drugs, many were simply strange concoctions for drinking, to enjoy the drug ride that followed. Many "teas" were for that purpose and that purpose alone, and had a far longer and far stronger drug trip than the simple teas of today. Mescaline teas were common, as was a brew that contained both DMT, an MAOI that lengthened the effects and made them stronger, and other varied drugs.

I mean hell... how did we figure out smoking certain things would lead to OMG AWESOME!!!! and others led to nothing. And then figuring out some weren't really good for smoking, but awesome if consumed.

There were a lot of risk takers in our early tribal days, and we should definitely thank them.

 

[Ninjahedge]

Well, what I am saying is that there are some things you can see how they came about, and others not.

Most veggies were probably things that someone ate after seeinga critter eat them. 99% of the foods that other mammals eat is safe for us. that 1% we found by trial and...oops.

Cooking meat and other things may have just been a side effect of a forest fire, or someone throwing a piece on the fire and liking the way it smelled.

As for things like Tobacco, like most drugs (caco), people just chewed the leaves and got a buzz. Then they looked for ways to preserve it and such. Smoking it may have been another fire/forest fire thing, but it may have come along with other combustables first (pot) and the noticable effects committed to memory and then experimented with other leaves.

Hell, look at what our teens TODAY sniff!

But is it just weird to see some things that are not a single step or two away being consumed. You wonder what the first person was thinking when they tried to do it (on purpose).....