Laktose & Laktase
- Augora Fermente
- vor 2 Tagen
- 2 Min. Lesezeit
Do you know this one? Say “snow, snow, snow” ten times … and then answer this question: “What does a cow drink?”
If you just said “milk”, you’ve fallen into an association trap. Because cows can’t tolerate milk. First they get terrible bloating, then diarrhoea.
Both are very bad. The former for the ozone layer, the latter for everyone standing nearby. Speaking from experience, I can only advise you: if the cow lifts its tail, run.
Actually, it’s quite simple.
Small mammals drink milk. Adult mammals don’t tolerate it.
It’s an ageing phenomenon that starts surprisingly early. Once an animal is weaned, the body begins to reduce its production of lactase.
No lactase, no breakdown of lactose.
So it isn’t lactose intolerance in adulthood that is unusual, but the ability of some mammals to continue digesting large amounts of lactose.
And that, alongside the Seven Wonders of the World, the invention of dental floss and the Moon landing, is one of humanity’s great achievements.
Homo sapiens is 315,000 years old, and for 300,000 years humans didn’t drink milk. Then, almost exactly 12,498 years ago, the following happened:
A few women were sitting around having coffee in what was not yet Palestine. They were bitterly complaining about all the travelling, the endless piles of dirty laundry, and the thorny berries they had to gather whenever their beloved had failed to catch so much as a rabbit.
They wanted a permanent home, a stove and a washing machine. Their plan: breed instead of hunt – and summon the Miele Messiah, who would one day descend upon Earth bearing his technological gadgets.
Before long, a lame goat was captured, a little garden fenced in, and a billy goat persuaded to start a family. A kid was born, the goat produced milk. Milking was invented. The milk tasted delicious – but after only a day, it had turned sour.
The invocations of the Miele Messiah for a refrigerator, washing machine and vacuum cleaner would take another 12,368 years to bear fruit.
Fresh milk caused diarrhoea. Artificial lactase enzyme was available neither online nor from the quack doctor down in Wadi an-Natuf. The women persevered.
The history of humans settling down is also a history of epic bloating and diarrhoea. It took thousands of years, and the process is still not complete today. The longer a society has been in the herding business, the more milk-tolerant it tends to be. So Asia’s current café latte craze is a questionable idea, if only in terms of CFC production and rising toilet-paper consumption.
But the wise women quickly discovered that, with a little skill, soured milk could be transformed into the finest delicacies: sour cream, curd cheese, cheese, yoghurt and kefir. Longer-lasting and much easier to digest. Why? Because the bloating had been outsourced to the bacteria.
One of these wise women was buried with a stylish hat and a necklace. Strung onto it were milk-kefir grains. They allowed her people, the Uyghurs, to drink milk without regret. Fermented milk. And they may even have helped the mummy and her hat achieve this fantastic feat of preservation (see attached photo).
So if you still want to look this good 4,000 years from now, you know what to do.
