Cheese Based Question aimed at Colonials.

[Robson Valley]

Canada was French. A lot of it in the East still is. It's FRENCH! or you go to jail for English.
Courier du Bois and others. We exported the Cajuns (look it up) from Acadia.
We have 2 official languages. Mandarin needs to be the 3rd one.

The Spanish influence in the American Southwest just overwhelms everything else.
Like the Pacific Northwest First Nations culture does where I live.
It's all around us, everywhere you look, every day.

 

[Janne]

Do the First Nations make a cheese?
The Same make a cheese from reindeer milk. Kind of goats cheese taste.

Only a quarter of todays Canada was French. Quebec. The rest was English.

 

[Robson Valley]

There wasn't anybody in the other 3/4 of Canada. Just First Nations.

You people have no idea how empty this place really is.
My own province of British Columbia is 3 times the size of Britain, OK?
Britain has, what? 65 million stuffed into the place?
BC has 4.5 million, mostly in the Greater Vancouver area. Victoria, Kamloops, Kelowna, maybe 90k in Prince George, that's it.
The rest of the place has scattered villages. We have NO cell service in between.
GPS is crap in the mountains. Get a map, buy a really good compass and learn to read them both.

If you are incredibly stupid, you might try to milk a bison. Suicidal adventure in my close-up view.
The fact that the First Nations are survivors and successful is testament to their intelligence.
The equivalent abundant protein (aka cheese) for storage everywhere was either bison meat or fish or both.
Salmon oil, Oolichan oil (there's a nauseating treat that you have to grow up with) supplies the necessary fats in the diet.

 

[Janne]

Caribou. Pity the 1:st N. had no need to domesticate them. I guss the ‘protein and fat’ was more easily accessible than in Eurasia?

 

[santaman2000]

If I remember correctly, most of the world ethnicities other than Western Asia and most of Europe are lactose intolerant as adults (like most other mammal species) So I doubt there is much of a cheese making tradition outside those (or their descendants that spread around the globe)

 

[Janne]

I am lactose intolerant, but cheese and youghurt is fine.
The level of lactose in those products is very low.

Drinking milk as an adult is wrong.

The Masai in Africa also drink milk, and blood.

 

[santaman2000]

I am lactose intolerant, but cheese and youghurt is fine.
The level of lactose in those products is very low.

Most lactose intolerant people I know are as equally unable to eat cheese and other dairy products as they are to drink milk. I suppose it could be psycosomatic? Either way, if a people are unable to drink milk it would be logical that they wouldn't keep dairy animals to begin with; in turn they wouldn't develop cheese culture? All guesswork however.

Yeah, I think the Masai are an exception to the pattern though. I know lactose intolerance is higher among African-Americans than it is among the general population.

 

[Janne]

Could be which cheese. The older the less lactose.

 

[Robson Valley]

Seems probable that lactose tolerance in humans is a relatively recent mutation, maybe in the last 15,000 years.
So, intolerance is the original, not some recent historic defect. Nothing "wrong" with adults drinking milk, just unusual.
Adult dogs and cats can get mighty sick with a lot of milk.
Dig around in the archives of ScienceDaily.com as I won't look it up, myself, again.

Lactose is a disaccharide sugar and doesn't participate directly in the cheese making process
so I can imagine that most if not all of it can be washed out of the protein curds.

Spearing salmon or trout in weirs or netting them at jumps is so easily done. Just stand there!
Big game has no niche in the Boreal Forest climax communities. There must be disturbance, edge,
deciduous veg for them to thrive.

 

[Janne]

Babies need milk to live. They have the enzymes to deal with it. They can not digest other foods.
Adults do not need milk as we eat other, age appropriate food.
Hense the lack of enzymes (in most of us) for digestion of milk.

Lactose intolerance is not so bad. Flatulence, loose stools.

 

[Toddy]

I can't drink milk either. Just makes me sick and full of wind.....which to quote a friend, is no surprise babies cry, because wind hurts.

I can eat a little mature cheese though and some yoghurt, just not new/new yoghurt.

I was fine with milk until my mid twenties or so. Now it's not worth the bother and discomfort.

I think the ability to digest milk into adulthood is of enormous benefit to humanity, but the ability to digest cheese is I suspect of greater value in the temperate North.

M

 

[oldtimer]

What a useful thread this is turning out to be.

My wife developed digestive problems about ten years ago and had her gall bladder removed. She developed symptoms similar to those Toddy and others describe. She can eat hard cheeses but not milk and especially not cream. Since she needs plenty of calcium as she has osteoporosis, she found the posts above very interesting and useful. She sends her thanks.

 

[Robson Valley]

True, we are mammals. Juvenile genetics allows for the digestion of milk, lactose included.
Interesting that lactose disaccharide is found no where else but in mammals.
Anyway, the juvenile genetics gets shut off in many people such that they react badly to milk and milk products.
For other mammals, growing up abandons any further opportunity for milk.

One of my adult kids is lactose intolerant.
Uses "Lactade" (Lactaid?) enzyme in milk to split the lactose and isomerise the galactose into glucose.
Very effective solution to the puzzle.

 

[Janne]

The gallbladder has a function, it collects and squirts out the bile. Bile is needed in the absorption of fat.
There is maybe a possibility that the milk fat has been changed by the aging?


She also maybe developed a lactose intolerance, and the resulting mild inflammation also inflamed the gallbladder.

They think my Lactose intolerance is caused by a (yet undiagnosed cause) food intolerance.
Have a bit of gallbladder issues too.

The joys of getting old and (not so) wise....

Low lactose milk is excellent in coffee!

 

[Toddy]

oldtimer ? I found recipes and ways to eat calcium that my body could easily absorb. Happy to talk to Mrs Oldtimer by pm or email.

I know it gets a bad press but soya is your friend, especially soya tofu properly made using calcium. Just treat it like egg white and it's easily digested. In the past folks ate almonds, and home made almond milk is much nicer than the bought in a carton stuff, for calcium.
Just mind to take Vit D too otherwise we don't absorb the calcium well enough to be of real benefit.

I like soya cream when I need cream in a recipe but I'm not fond of low lactose milk at all.

Family wise there's only me that has any issues. My Grandmother and one of her sisters were intolerant too, and there's a second cousin who has problems with it. The next two generations seem to be fine, though the younger ones are still no older than teenagers yet.

Apparantly it's a throwback to the earliest northern Europeans and not the incoming farmers/herders, and the estimates put it at 10m Brits are lactose intolerant....but that still means that most of us can drink milk and milk products easily.

https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/neolithic-europeans-were-lactose-intolerant/3002783.article

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22643754

https://www.nature.com/news/archaeology-the-milk-revolution-1.13471

 

[oldtimer]

Thank you, Toddy. Have a happy lactose free Christmas and hogmanay replete with vegetarian goodies!

 

[Robson Valley]

Thank you Toddy. Good, straight, accurate, nutritional information. A rare beast.

 

[Toddy]

Thank you kindly
My pantry is stuffed to the gunnels, and I'm quietly enjoying seasonal treats carefully stashed away earlier in the year.

I hope your own Christmas is suitably Merry and full of family and good company

M

 

[Toddy]

Thank you, Toddy. Have a happy lactose free Christmas and hogmanay replete with vegetarian goodies!

While I mind though; Xylaria posted a recipe for bone broth that she credits with repairing her own bone issues.
Might be worth having a word with Fiona, it seemed very practical if one can and does eat meat.

M

 

[Janne]

Interesting you write about bone broth and repairing bones.
An old central European receipe to help heal broken bones is beef bone broth, where you add a dash of Apple cider vinegar to the water.
The acidity dissolves a bit of the calcium you then ingest.
Also a Brawn made from Calves Feet, again, cooked with Apple Cider vinegar