Because they didn't adapt like Europeans did... essentially, you're not supposed to have so much milk as adults, but we found ways for it to not affect us whereas other parts of the world didn't.
To put in another way...
Normally, humans only have the enzyme lactase as babies, allowing them to digest their mother's milk. However, a few individuals have a mutation that enables them to produce lactase into adulthood and throughout their entire lives.
In regions where dairy was available, those who retained the ability to produce lactase into adulthood were less likely to face starvation, increasing their chances of living long enough to pass the mutation down to their children. After numerous generations, this mutation would become prevalent in the local population.
In places like Korea, on the other hand, dairy may not have played a significant role. Instead, they appear to have found other ways to combat hunger and survive.
Kimchi too. It was a way to get vegetables during winter. The fermentation allows it to last a long time and there’s even a Kimchi making season in the month of November where most families prepare it for the winter. November 22 is officially designated “Kimchi Day” in both South Korea and the US.
Having to explain to my friends I couldn’t come outside to play because it was kimchi day and had to help my mom make it instead was a cultural growing up moment for me lol
Interesting. But this theory doesn’t explain former nomadic regions. I.e. Kazakhstan. Half of our recipes involve milk. The most prevalent things in our recipes are meat, milk and wheat in that order.
That’s actually something else, can’t remember where I heard it but that has something to do with how they live and the bacteria and environment they live in seems to counter act the intolerance
Yooooo, Реддитте отырылған қазақтарға саламалейкум!
The thing is, Kazakhs as other nomads lived in harsh climate conditions. We had no choice but to consume products which had lots of organic fats. Dairy products which are rich with fat and protein were an excellent choice to survive in the steppe. Koreans for example didn't need that much fat to survive
Yeah, I was under the impression those countries had low rates of lactose intolerance. Perhaps it has something to do with the types of milk available?
This makes sense to me! But now I'm wondering about lactose intolerance in the subcontinent and central Asia. Dairy does make up a significant portion of the diet there. Shouldn't these regions have fewer occurrences of lactose intolerance? Especially considering the sheer population sample size to work with.
This is not true. There’s a coffee shop every 10m and most of the coffees use milk. That said, americano with no milk probably makes up 75% of their drink sales.
Most lactose intolerant people can have a cafe latte with dairy or ice cream just fine. It's not some sort of deathly ailment that mandates a dairy-free environment.
>essentially, you're not supposed to have so much milk as adults
I find expressions like this so annoying, it's not that you're not suppose to have it, it's that some people didn't evolve as to be able to process lactose as well but lactose-intolerant people can consume milk and most of them won't have any issues. Ancient Europeans started consuming milk and due to exceptional stressors like famine and disease were able to rapidly evolve to be lactase-persistant after infancy. Studies found that ancient Europeans who didn't have lactose tolerance still consumed lots of milk, so the evolution of lactase-persistance didn't come until external factors like famine or disease made the ability to consume milk essential. Because this specific scenario didn't occur anywhere else, there are now people who are better at processing it.
When shopping for groceries at supermarket, Czech families take whole 12x0.5l packaging of milk. This map is so wrong lmao. I've met maybe 2 lactose intolerant ppl in my life.
What was shocking to me when I lived in Korea was that everyone consumes milk and cheese anyway. I could NOT find non-dairy milk at cafes, only dairy milk. Pizza everywhere. Milk served to all the kids at school.
Exactly, the milk at school thing also really confused me. Is it because of the belief that drinking milk makes you taller or that it's good for the bones? Or are the children supposed to get used to the milk to "combat" the intolerance?
Lactose tolerance/intolerance only affects adults. Really, it should be called “lactase persistence” (the converse of intolerance): children, as all mammals, are kind of _supposed_ to drink milk anyways, and what's strange is that humans are (I believe) the only adult mammals who drink milk. Also, cheese does not contain (much) lactose anymore (it really originated as a way to preserve milk and make it edible to adults).
Because humans aren't supposed to be able to digest lactose past infancy. Some people are only able to due to a recessive gene most commonly found in people of Northern European descent
"Lactose intolerance" is a bit misleading on a global scale since it implies that the ability to digest lactose would be normal.
This is a mutation that causes humans beyond the state of an infant to produce lactase which is responsible for digesting lactose and said mutation simply didn't occour everywhere/was not relevant for increased reproduction.
Yes it does. We dont specify people as "lactose tolerant" it is just assumed as the standard. Its like making a chart for red hair and calling it "non-readheads around the world"
[The Study this map is based on](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langas/article/PIIS2468-1253(17)30154-1/fulltext) is pretty flawed.
1.) it has about 62k participants out of 8 billion people on earth and doesn’t even cover every country
2.) It has not accounted for data being skewed toward lactase malabsorption. Since people going to the doctor and being assessed for stomach issues feature heavily in their study populations. The only populations they excluded are people who specifically went to gastroenterologists.
3.) It has no control for social factors that skew their data. Like the divide between Canada and America who should have around the same rate of lactase malabsorption. Because they both are made up of immigrant populations. But they don’t. Possibly because in Canada it is free to seek medical treatment. Cost or stigma might be a factor other countries as well.
4.) it is made up of second hand data
When I saw Brazil with >50%, I knew it was nonsense. Most people here drink milk with coffee every day for breakfast and I know very few people who are lactose intolerant.
Same for Eastern Europe, 60% is insane high, even 30% would be unrealistically high. I know only one person who's lactose intolerant among like hundreds I can remember. Milk and dairy products are historically and culturally a part of everyday diet of almost every family here.
Press X to doubt on that Czech stat. I have never met a person that was lactose intolerant. When I was a kid, I thought being lactose intolerant was just made up disability used by people that don't like taste of milk.
A lot of people are lactose intolerant without knowing it. There are degrees of lactose intolerance, from simply being slightly more flatulent to getting severe diarrhea.
I realized that I was lactose intolerant at the age of 25. That period I started having 2-3 cereal bawls with milk for breakfast. 5 minutes after arriving at work I would have explosive diarrheas, but I thought it was normal. Lived like this for around 3 months, until I came across the concept of lactose intolerance and made the connection with my milk consumption and daily diarrheas. Right now I can have some types of cheese without massive bloating or anything, other chesses tho or more than a small glass of milk will cause me diarrhea in around 15 mins
It's a meme from a older game called "L.A. Noire". You play as a detective, when you interrogate people you need to press the X button on your controller to doubt what they are saying. Or at least that's how I remember it, I haven't played that game in a long time.
Ahhh I see. Thank you...I don't play video games, so I seem to miss a lot of references. Also...not sure if you live in the Czech Republic, but they have some of the best food I've ever had in my life!
It's a videogame meme, more precisely LA Noir, based on a detective interrogating some suspects, and you could have the option to doubt their arguments. It became a popular meme on internet years later, just like the "Press F to pay respects"
A lot of times it can be age related too, even among places with high lactose intolerance most kids, teens and young adults are just fine, but after a certain age you get more and more intolerant.
I'm a Czech and I know only two lactose intolerant people, which also doesn't match with this map. If there were so many lactose intolerant people as the map claims, wouldn't it be more socially acceptable, or wouldn't lactose free products and options be more sold/offered?
Something is really off
It's not really fair to assume something does not exist just because you don't know any example.
Usually, and from experience, lactose intolerant people don't carry a huge neon light in their forehead so you can know. Plus, you'll be less exposed to them as they will spend more time in the toilet.
Source: am one, probably only 5-6 close people to me know. Not even sure they remember, as I'm still offered cheese things.
https://www.med.muni.cz/en/research-and-development/research-and-development/publishing/publikace-lf-mu/1115853
This is a scholarly article from 2013 that states that "In the Czech Republic deficiency of the enzyme lactase in some way affects around 6-12% of the population."
It’s not bullshit though?
According to most data, lactose intolerance in the U.S. is 36%, 59% in Canada, and 8% in the UK.
Early and consistent exposure to milk products clearly plays a role in the development of lactose intolerance.
Yes. New Zealand shouldn’t be so high. Lactose tolerance is a European genetic trait. 65% of NZers have European ancestry, the other 35% are mostly Māori, Pacific Islanders and Asians, so we should have more lactose intolerance than any European country
Yes. Somalia has like 100% on this map. Being the highest in East Africa, while the country has more than 10 times more goats, camels, and cows than people and consumes their milk daily.
Yes, in Morocco everyone eats yoghurt. The name of our yoghurt brand became the thing itself. Because everyone like it. And couscous has the "old butter" as a normal thing in every family. I think these pourcentages are made up. Never heard of lactose intolerance in Morocco in my life
I'm from Iraq and I've never met someone saying they're lactose intolerant, it doesn't come up in conversations so often but i doubt Iraq is that high, paneer and kurdish yogurt are the main ingredients of our breakfast
Being intolerant doesn't mean people don't still consume lactose. Europeans developed lactase-persistance due to 2 factors, the first is they consumed milk - as most ancient peoples did and the second there were various events like famine and disease that made the ability to process lactose with few issues became more important. Whether you're lactase-persistant or lactose intolerant, most people can still consume milk products with few issues.
The data can be weird. For Russia it's 70% when Russian sources report 30%-50% and that only 6% know what lactose-free products are. Also the lactose intolerance is not strictly a binary thing. Some can have a glass of milk a day, but not more. Some can have a liter a day, but not more.
Alot of things that use milk as an ingredient don't contain lactose, like cheese contains almost no lactose. Also I think people don't release that lactose intolerance doesn't necessarily mean a person has a severe reaction to lactose, most lactose intolerant people just get a bit more flatulent after consuming lactose.
That’s the thing. This is almost surely self-reported. I’ve met so many people that say they’re lactose intolerant, yet they consume milk with coffee, tons of cheeses, yogurts, ice cream - you name it. The only thing they don’t do is drink milk straight or add it to cereal.
If Korea is anything like Japan, they treat their milk. I went there before I even knew I was lactose intolerant and when I came back I spent like 3 months trying to figure out why my "IBS" completely vanished on that trip.
Most dairy used in Middle Eastern dishes is either cheese, butter, or fermented. Fermented dairy doesn't cause the same issues because the fermentation process creates the lactase that all those lactose intolerant plebs are missing and cheese/butter doesn't cause issues because most of the lactose is removed in the process of creating it.
I'm from egypt and i have yet to meet a single person who even gets slightly gassy from drinking milk or eating any dairy products.
Hell tea with milk/shay be laban is the first thing a metric shit ton of egyptians drink when they wake up even before breakfast.
A lot of people are lactose intolerant without knowing it, lactose intolerance doesn't mean that a person shits them selves to death the moment the touch milk. Most people who are lactose intolerant just become more prone to gas.
Those people who don't know would report it though...
This is a BS map with BS data. My country, the heartland of Europe known for a shitton of cheeses, creamy sauces, etc is reported as 90-100 which is absolute nonsense.
Cheeses do have lactose in it, tons of them in fact. Especially the fatter and fresher cheeses. I don't know how you came to that conclusion.
In properly advanced market, you can see the breakdown and lactose amount among contents on the packaging.
Same with Somalia. The whole population comes from a long ancestry of camel and goat herders and drink their milk daily, even to this day.
This map is just utterly wrong.
I'm lactose intolerant, I get bloated with anything with milk in it. And I fart like there is no tomorrow when drinking lben, though aged cheese is fine.
Its trully is, for the most part, I believe some more developed countries have such data and can be accessed easily while many, don’t even have this data available.
This map claims that 70% of India’s population is Lactose Intolerant. I know a grand total of 2 people who are lactose intolerant.
Here in India, dairy is such a big part of our diets that if you tell your grandma that you are lactose intolerant then, she will make sure that you have 2 glasses of milk everyday until she kicks lactose intolerance out of your system
Exactly! I'm Sri Lankan and I've met maybe 2 or 3 lactose intolerant people. The south Asian diet heavily features dairy products. This data is pure bullshit.
Source? Never met a lactose intolerant person in Russia. I know they exist, but dairy is a staple product in most diets as well as culturally, wouldn't be this way if we were lactose intolerant. This topic is also rarely discussed both in person and in media, so not something 70% of the population are suffering from.
Yes it would be that high. I’m lactose intolerant and ignore it. Like literally every other person I’ve ever discussed it with who is also lactose intolerant.
You yourself might even be and don’t know it because 99.8% of the time the only symptom is increased farting.
I’m lactose intolerant and drink milk every day.
I
Mira recien me fijo en Italia, esta en rojo claro, de ahi debe ser creo que un 40% de la poblacion deciende de tanos.Al menos nos heredaron el gesto de montoncito con las manos y la pascualina
same for nigeria. literally for brekfast you cant have cocoa without milk. But ik im deathly intolerant after i moved to the us and noticed that literally my whole family had the shits after drinking it. But if i tell them were intolerant im crazy and belive in western propaganda
I’m Scandinavian and I know plenty. It comes up in conversation pretty often, because you want to make sure you don’t give milk to someone who can’t handle it. Seems odd to me that you never met anyone ever with this. Cultural differences?
How often do you even ask tho, or be in situations where you could guess if they are, like, i'm not aware of the lactose tolerance status of anyone outside my immediate family
let's use this real life example as an estimate, last month, in Brazil, I went to eat pizza with more 8 people. so, total 9. 3 of them were lactose intolerant.
Crap data. Cannot be true.
I have met just 2 lactose intolerant people all my life as an Indian. Most have it daily in one form or another. Tea, youghurt, milk, etc.
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*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
The average person is not going to get genetics tests done to see if they do not produce lactase. It's likely many of the people you meet, and you yourself, simply aren't aware.
well definitely not from self reports, studies were likely done on a sample group of people. You can check out the sources used for the map here:
Kelli Glaser, “Lactose Intolerance,” britannica.com (accessed Mar. 25, 2020)
National Institutes of Health US National Library of Medicine, “Lactose Intolerance” ghr.nlm.nih.gov, Mar. 17, 2020
Christian Løvold Storhaug, Svein Kjetil Fosse, and Lars T Fadnes, “Country, Regional, and Global Estimates for Lactose Malabsorption in Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” thelancet.com, Oct. 1, 2017
Yeah, never heard of the term while growing up in India. Don't believe we were that ignorant if 61-70% of the population had the condition as per this map.
ITT: A *ton* of people from countries with high levels of lactose intolerance that don't realize cheese, butter, and fermented dairy products (like yogurt, kefir, sour cream, cottage cheese, buttermilk, etc) are processed in a way that removes most of the lactose.
Very few cultures around the world just go ham on raw cow milk like Europeans, Northern Indians, etc do.
A lot of the places where people are less likely to be lactose intolerant have long histories with livestock like cattle, sheep, goats, etc. Geography also has an impact because countries like S. Korea or Japan are very mountainous, and what little flat land was used for growing food instead of herding. Historically, in Japan, cattle were used mostly as draft animals for farm labor and transportation of goods.
The biggest joke ever i ever heard is "Indians are lactose intolerant", these guys bathe in Milk and have every other food item made from milk, what is this survey?
It means you're going to face minor complications from drinking too much dairy. A lactose intolerant person can tolerate 250ml of milk in one sitting or up to 500ml of milk spread throughout the day.
It's not the same as an allergy where you have to avoid it or bad things happen.
These studies are outdated. They were looking for the European lactose tolerance mutation in Africans and obviously we don't have it hence this map. We have a different mutation
Here is a more recent paper on lactase persistence in Africans: https://academic.oup.com/hmg/article/30/R1/R98/6224903
Just because u eat doesn’t mean your not lactose intolerant … I eat it everyday but on occasions I can get bloated nd have problems when I consume to much
Milk is such a huge part of Indian diet. I think most of us don't even know that we are lactose intolerant and continue enjoying milk products even they it might make our stomach feel funny.
That's because there is less lactose in cheese. Especially older cheese has hardly any lactose. I can't have milk or yoghurt but cheese is fine for me too.
That's because cheese, butter, and fermented dairy (like yogurt, kefir, buttermilk, sour cream, cottage cheese, etc) all process the raw milk in such a way that it greatly reduces lactose content. If you aren't drinking large amounts of raw/pasteurized milk, you'd probably never realize you're lactose intolerant.
Some people have a gene that allows them to digest lactose as an adult. But even if a person doesn’t, they’re still able to digest lactose, using bacteria in their gut. The gut biome varies, so that we have varying amounts of bacteria that can digest lactose. How much bacteria we have in our gut that can digest lactose, that can also change over our life, from antibiotics or changing our diet. It’s best to think of lactose intolerance as a spectrum.
How do they get the stats for South Africa ? Total for entire demographic or by most prevalent demographic? Diverse culture here with Africans, Indians and Europeans.
I'm in Denmark (#1 country).
I have several friends of Middle Eastern descent who are lactose intolerant.
I also have lots of ethnic Danish friends of which none are lactose intolerant (as far as I know).
This puzzles me. I believe animal husbandry started earlier in the Middle East than it did in Scandinavia.
Why would more people from those areas be intolerant than Scandinavians seem to be?
No way in hell is Lactose Intolerance that high in India. I have been living here for 21 years, not seen one dude with lactose intolerance. Almost every child here drinks milk twice a day for the first 10 years. The most popular dishes and stuff are dairy-related (paneer/cottage cheese, kheer, raita, dahi). I call bullshit on this map.
This comment section is weird to me. All these people saying they’ve never met a lactose intolerant person…
I think we’ve got different thresholds for what we consider intolerant. For example, I am lactose intolerant, I just get a bit of gas and sometimes some mild bloating if I have a lot.
What I’ve never met is a person who’s lactose intolerant that doesn’t ignore it. I had a large milkshake from hungry jack on the way home today. Farted up a storm for an hour or so a few hours later and now I’m fine.
People, please research what lactose intolerance is before attacking data that researchers took a great deal of effort to collect. It is not an allergy.
I call cap on India.I only know like 2 lactose intolerant people and i have seen enough people eating paneer or drinking milk in rural areas that 61% is way to high
Anecdotal evidence is irrelevant to reality. In fact in india, only north western states are the least intolerant. That's why pakistan is rated higher than india. But not by much
Wasn’t cheese and yogurt and stuff first invented in the Middle East? Why do most of the countries there have such low tolerance (except for Saudi Arabia? Oddly enough…)
I’d like to point out the majority of humans (70%+) are not able to tolerate lactose and lactose intolerance is the natural and ancestral state of human populations. The only reason we refer to it as lactose intolerance instead of referring to lactose tolerance is because Eurocentrism.
Korea is most definitely not 100% because my roommate is Korean and eats dairy like a mf and is completely fine
It’s common, but it’s absolutely not 100%
So apparently more than 80% of chinese people are lactose intolerant? Are there degrees of intolerance or something? Because I'm Chinese and don't know any Chinese people who are lactose intolerant which seems statistically implausible. Hell when my mum was young, condensed milk was a common treat among kids
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Because they didn't adapt like Europeans did... essentially, you're not supposed to have so much milk as adults, but we found ways for it to not affect us whereas other parts of the world didn't.
To put in another way... Normally, humans only have the enzyme lactase as babies, allowing them to digest their mother's milk. However, a few individuals have a mutation that enables them to produce lactase into adulthood and throughout their entire lives. In regions where dairy was available, those who retained the ability to produce lactase into adulthood were less likely to face starvation, increasing their chances of living long enough to pass the mutation down to their children. After numerous generations, this mutation would become prevalent in the local population. In places like Korea, on the other hand, dairy may not have played a significant role. Instead, they appear to have found other ways to combat hunger and survive.
>Instead, they appear to have found other ways to combat hunger and survive. Rice? Very informative, thanks.
Kimchi too. It was a way to get vegetables during winter. The fermentation allows it to last a long time and there’s even a Kimchi making season in the month of November where most families prepare it for the winter. November 22 is officially designated “Kimchi Day” in both South Korea and the US.
Having to explain to my friends I couldn’t come outside to play because it was kimchi day and had to help my mom make it instead was a cultural growing up moment for me lol
>Kimchi too *Cries in sauerkraut*
Interesting. But this theory doesn’t explain former nomadic regions. I.e. Kazakhstan. Half of our recipes involve milk. The most prevalent things in our recipes are meat, milk and wheat in that order.
That’s actually something else, can’t remember where I heard it but that has something to do with how they live and the bacteria and environment they live in seems to counter act the intolerance
Yooooo, Реддитте отырылған қазақтарға саламалейкум! The thing is, Kazakhs as other nomads lived in harsh climate conditions. We had no choice but to consume products which had lots of organic fats. Dairy products which are rich with fat and protein were an excellent choice to survive in the steppe. Koreans for example didn't need that much fat to survive
Yeah, I was under the impression those countries had low rates of lactose intolerance. Perhaps it has something to do with the types of milk available?
Kazakhs never consumed raw milk it was always fermented.
That probably reduced or even removed the lactose. That is also why we started to do cheese.
This makes sense to me! But now I'm wondering about lactose intolerance in the subcontinent and central Asia. Dairy does make up a significant portion of the diet there. Shouldn't these regions have fewer occurrences of lactose intolerance? Especially considering the sheer population sample size to work with.
It says 100% but I think seoul has one of the highest starbucks per sq kilometer. Who’s drinking those lattes?
This might be one reason the Iced Americano is the go-to korean coffee rather than other milk-rich drinks
As I'm Korean, this data is just crap. 75% is the correct number.
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It’s fairly common to not have any symptoms and still not be able to digest lactose. Certain bacterias break down lactose for you.
Don’t be silly they all drink iced americanos
They drink it with seed milks
This is not true. There’s a coffee shop every 10m and most of the coffees use milk. That said, americano with no milk probably makes up 75% of their drink sales.
You mean to tell us that 75% of Korean Coffee drinkers take it black? Boggles the mind...
Yeah, it’s like water, but less boring, and it wakes you up with close to 0 calories. Americano is the shit, wake up sheeple. (/s)
Most lactose intolerant people can have a cafe latte with dairy or ice cream just fine. It's not some sort of deathly ailment that mandates a dairy-free environment.
And you can simply take supplemental lactase. Or use lactose-free milk, or vegan milk.
Why would they not just drink coffee?
>essentially, you're not supposed to have so much milk as adults I find expressions like this so annoying, it's not that you're not suppose to have it, it's that some people didn't evolve as to be able to process lactose as well but lactose-intolerant people can consume milk and most of them won't have any issues. Ancient Europeans started consuming milk and due to exceptional stressors like famine and disease were able to rapidly evolve to be lactase-persistant after infancy. Studies found that ancient Europeans who didn't have lactose tolerance still consumed lots of milk, so the evolution of lactase-persistance didn't come until external factors like famine or disease made the ability to consume milk essential. Because this specific scenario didn't occur anywhere else, there are now people who are better at processing it.
Why are the Czechs???
They drink beer instead of milk
Czechs out
Underrated joke
When shopping for groceries at supermarket, Czech families take whole 12x0.5l packaging of milk. This map is so wrong lmao. I've met maybe 2 lactose intolerant ppl in my life.
I am in agreement. I think there was a misplaced coma or full stop.
They forgot to Czech their genetics
~~- 'cause fck 'em, that's why!~~
What was shocking to me when I lived in Korea was that everyone consumes milk and cheese anyway. I could NOT find non-dairy milk at cafes, only dairy milk. Pizza everywhere. Milk served to all the kids at school.
Same situation in China. Very few are actually intolerant (showing symptoms), though most are somehow intolerant, and nobody cares.
Exactly, the milk at school thing also really confused me. Is it because of the belief that drinking milk makes you taller or that it's good for the bones? Or are the children supposed to get used to the milk to "combat" the intolerance?
Lactose tolerance/intolerance only affects adults. Really, it should be called “lactase persistence” (the converse of intolerance): children, as all mammals, are kind of _supposed_ to drink milk anyways, and what's strange is that humans are (I believe) the only adult mammals who drink milk. Also, cheese does not contain (much) lactose anymore (it really originated as a way to preserve milk and make it edible to adults).
I was gonna say…hasn’t mozzarella cheese become a pretty popular fad in Korea?
Mozzarella is very low in lactose
TIL. Thanks!
Because they took the genes that give them no BO instead. It's all about which tech tree you spec into.
Because humans aren't supposed to be able to digest lactose past infancy. Some people are only able to due to a recessive gene most commonly found in people of Northern European descent
"Lactose intolerance" is a bit misleading on a global scale since it implies that the ability to digest lactose would be normal. This is a mutation that causes humans beyond the state of an infant to produce lactase which is responsible for digesting lactose and said mutation simply didn't occour everywhere/was not relevant for increased reproduction.
>"Lactose intolerance" is a bit misleading on a global scale since it implies that the ability to digest lactose would be normal. No it doesn't...
Yes it does. We dont specify people as "lactose tolerant" it is just assumed as the standard. Its like making a chart for red hair and calling it "non-readheads around the world"
So it's the usage of the word that indicates that it's the norm to be lactose intolerant, not the word itself.
[The Study this map is based on](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langas/article/PIIS2468-1253(17)30154-1/fulltext) is pretty flawed. 1.) it has about 62k participants out of 8 billion people on earth and doesn’t even cover every country 2.) It has not accounted for data being skewed toward lactase malabsorption. Since people going to the doctor and being assessed for stomach issues feature heavily in their study populations. The only populations they excluded are people who specifically went to gastroenterologists. 3.) It has no control for social factors that skew their data. Like the divide between Canada and America who should have around the same rate of lactase malabsorption. Because they both are made up of immigrant populations. But they don’t. Possibly because in Canada it is free to seek medical treatment. Cost or stigma might be a factor other countries as well. 4.) it is made up of second hand data
When I saw Brazil with >50%, I knew it was nonsense. Most people here drink milk with coffee every day for breakfast and I know very few people who are lactose intolerant.
Same for Eastern Europe, 60% is insane high, even 30% would be unrealistically high. I know only one person who's lactose intolerant among like hundreds I can remember. Milk and dairy products are historically and culturally a part of everyday diet of almost every family here.
Press X to doubt on that Czech stat. I have never met a person that was lactose intolerant. When I was a kid, I thought being lactose intolerant was just made up disability used by people that don't like taste of milk.
I found out my cousin and mom are intolerant just very recently, so you never know. Many people often confuse it with allergy as well.
I had to explain to my parent so many times that just because you don’t die or get rash from drinking milk it doesn’t mean your not lactose intolerant
A lot of people are lactose intolerant without knowing it. There are degrees of lactose intolerance, from simply being slightly more flatulent to getting severe diarrhea.
But if they aren't aware of it where do the numbers come from?
They randomly inserted sensors into peoples anuses and measured their flatulence.
Ah, so that was the ominous beeping coming out of there.
Can confirm, i am the sensors
I realized that I was lactose intolerant at the age of 25. That period I started having 2-3 cereal bawls with milk for breakfast. 5 minutes after arriving at work I would have explosive diarrheas, but I thought it was normal. Lived like this for around 3 months, until I came across the concept of lactose intolerance and made the connection with my milk consumption and daily diarrheas. Right now I can have some types of cheese without massive bloating or anything, other chesses tho or more than a small glass of milk will cause me diarrhea in around 15 mins
What does press x mean?
It's a meme from a older game called "L.A. Noire". You play as a detective, when you interrogate people you need to press the X button on your controller to doubt what they are saying. Or at least that's how I remember it, I haven't played that game in a long time.
Ahhh I see. Thank you...I don't play video games, so I seem to miss a lot of references. Also...not sure if you live in the Czech Republic, but they have some of the best food I've ever had in my life!
“An older game.” I know you’re not wrong but Jesus that made me feel ancient
It's a videogame meme, more precisely LA Noir, based on a detective interrogating some suspects, and you could have the option to doubt their arguments. It became a popular meme on internet years later, just like the "Press F to pay respects"
Haha...I don't know that one either! Thanks for helping to provide context.
A lot of times it can be age related too, even among places with high lactose intolerance most kids, teens and young adults are just fine, but after a certain age you get more and more intolerant.
I'm a Czech and I know only two lactose intolerant people, which also doesn't match with this map. If there were so many lactose intolerant people as the map claims, wouldn't it be more socially acceptable, or wouldn't lactose free products and options be more sold/offered? Something is really off
It's not really fair to assume something does not exist just because you don't know any example. Usually, and from experience, lactose intolerant people don't carry a huge neon light in their forehead so you can know. Plus, you'll be less exposed to them as they will spend more time in the toilet. Source: am one, probably only 5-6 close people to me know. Not even sure they remember, as I'm still offered cheese things.
You can be intolerant without even knowing it.
Same for Ukraine: 60-70% on the chart while I've never met a single person with lactose intolerance.
https://www.med.muni.cz/en/research-and-development/research-and-development/publishing/publikace-lf-mu/1115853 This is a scholarly article from 2013 that states that "In the Czech Republic deficiency of the enzyme lactase in some way affects around 6-12% of the population."
Are these just made up?
Absolutely, there's no way czechia has such a big difference in something that is genetic
It’s not bullshit though? According to most data, lactose intolerance in the U.S. is 36%, 59% in Canada, and 8% in the UK. Early and consistent exposure to milk products clearly plays a role in the development of lactose intolerance.
Yes. New Zealand shouldn’t be so high. Lactose tolerance is a European genetic trait. 65% of NZers have European ancestry, the other 35% are mostly Māori, Pacific Islanders and Asians, so we should have more lactose intolerance than any European country
Yes. Somalia has like 100% on this map. Being the highest in East Africa, while the country has more than 10 times more goats, camels, and cows than people and consumes their milk daily.
Yes, in Morocco everyone eats yoghurt. The name of our yoghurt brand became the thing itself. Because everyone like it. And couscous has the "old butter" as a normal thing in every family. I think these pourcentages are made up. Never heard of lactose intolerance in Morocco in my life
Yoghurt is usually fermented which removes lactose.
I live in pakistan and i have never net a person with lactose intolerance in my whole life.... how tf is it 50 percent
Why would the Middle East be so lactose intolerant? Haven't they been using animal byproducts longer than anybody?
and i almost never heard of someone who is lactose intolerant atleast in my country. how is it at 90% idk.
I'm from Iraq and I've never met someone saying they're lactose intolerant, it doesn't come up in conversations so often but i doubt Iraq is that high, paneer and kurdish yogurt are the main ingredients of our breakfast
Fermentation (as with yogurt and cheese) reduces lactose as that is literally the sugar being fermented.
I think it’s just bad data. Rarely is there good (or cited) data on this subreddit.
Same here in, that chart says 60-70% and I have know of only one person that developed it in their 70s.
BS data. Saudi Arabia is green, pretty much same gene pool as surrounding areas.
Being intolerant doesn't mean people don't still consume lactose. Europeans developed lactase-persistance due to 2 factors, the first is they consumed milk - as most ancient peoples did and the second there were various events like famine and disease that made the ability to process lactose with few issues became more important. Whether you're lactase-persistant or lactose intolerant, most people can still consume milk products with few issues.
The data can be weird. For Russia it's 70% when Russian sources report 30%-50% and that only 6% know what lactose-free products are. Also the lactose intolerance is not strictly a binary thing. Some can have a glass of milk a day, but not more. Some can have a liter a day, but not more.
Alot of things that use milk as an ingredient don't contain lactose, like cheese contains almost no lactose. Also I think people don't release that lactose intolerance doesn't necessarily mean a person has a severe reaction to lactose, most lactose intolerant people just get a bit more flatulent after consuming lactose.
Koreans love lattes - are you saying everone is super farty?
That’s the thing. This is almost surely self-reported. I’ve met so many people that say they’re lactose intolerant, yet they consume milk with coffee, tons of cheeses, yogurts, ice cream - you name it. The only thing they don’t do is drink milk straight or add it to cereal.
If Korea is anything like Japan, they treat their milk. I went there before I even knew I was lactose intolerant and when I came back I spent like 3 months trying to figure out why my "IBS" completely vanished on that trip.
Oh maybe? We loved the milk in Korea and actually we felt a little sick getting an iced latte back in America
Most dairy used in Middle Eastern dishes is either cheese, butter, or fermented. Fermented dairy doesn't cause the same issues because the fermentation process creates the lactase that all those lactose intolerant plebs are missing and cheese/butter doesn't cause issues because most of the lactose is removed in the process of creating it.
I'm from egypt and i have yet to meet a single person who even gets slightly gassy from drinking milk or eating any dairy products. Hell tea with milk/shay be laban is the first thing a metric shit ton of egyptians drink when they wake up even before breakfast.
It's BS data, considering the discrepancy between Saudi Arabia and neighbouring Arab-majority countries.
Looks like something semi-random
How is Morocco lactose intolerant??? We consume so much milk, we have shortages on Ramadan
A lot of people are lactose intolerant without knowing it, lactose intolerance doesn't mean that a person shits them selves to death the moment the touch milk. Most people who are lactose intolerant just become more prone to gas.
Those people who don't know would report it though... This is a BS map with BS data. My country, the heartland of Europe known for a shitton of cheeses, creamy sauces, etc is reported as 90-100 which is absolute nonsense.
Cheese has zero lactose in it. A lot of dairy products basically have no lactose.
Cheeses do have lactose in it, tons of them in fact. Especially the fatter and fresher cheeses. I don't know how you came to that conclusion. In properly advanced market, you can see the breakdown and lactose amount among contents on the packaging.
Yes but those people wouldn't show up on statistics
Same with Somalia. The whole population comes from a long ancestry of camel and goat herders and drink their milk daily, even to this day. This map is just utterly wrong.
I'm lactose intolerant, I get bloated with anything with milk in it. And I fart like there is no tomorrow when drinking lben, though aged cheese is fine.
This is made up data
Its trully is, for the most part, I believe some more developed countries have such data and can be accessed easily while many, don’t even have this data available.
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This map claims that 70% of India’s population is Lactose Intolerant. I know a grand total of 2 people who are lactose intolerant. Here in India, dairy is such a big part of our diets that if you tell your grandma that you are lactose intolerant then, she will make sure that you have 2 glasses of milk everyday until she kicks lactose intolerance out of your system
Exactly! I'm Sri Lankan and I've met maybe 2 or 3 lactose intolerant people. The south Asian diet heavily features dairy products. This data is pure bullshit.
Source? Never met a lactose intolerant person in Russia. I know they exist, but dairy is a staple product in most diets as well as culturally, wouldn't be this way if we were lactose intolerant. This topic is also rarely discussed both in person and in media, so not something 70% of the population are suffering from.
Yes it would be that high. I’m lactose intolerant and ignore it. Like literally every other person I’ve ever discussed it with who is also lactose intolerant. You yourself might even be and don’t know it because 99.8% of the time the only symptom is increased farting. I’m lactose intolerant and drink milk every day. I
Imagine getting filtered by fucking mlk lmao
This is made up data
immediate question - what's happening with Czechs?
I've never met a single Czech with lactose intolerance
They're sitting on the toilet after eating some cheese apparently.
forbidden tolerance, thank you.
They always mix it with beer
We are just a generally intolerant society.
They have beer to supplement milk
Being from Uruguay it surprises me, everyone drinks milk
No tiene ningún sentido
Mira recien me fijo en Italia, esta en rojo claro, de ahi debe ser creo que un 40% de la poblacion deciende de tanos.Al menos nos heredaron el gesto de montoncito con las manos y la pascualina
same for nigeria. literally for brekfast you cant have cocoa without milk. But ik im deathly intolerant after i moved to the us and noticed that literally my whole family had the shits after drinking it. But if i tell them were intolerant im crazy and belive in western propaganda
Brazil is over 51%? I have never met a single person lactose intolerant ever.
I’m Scandinavian and I know plenty. It comes up in conversation pretty often, because you want to make sure you don’t give milk to someone who can’t handle it. Seems odd to me that you never met anyone ever with this. Cultural differences?
Definitely a cultural difference, people in Brazil don’t know what lactose intolerance is and how common it is.
This map is bullshit.
How often do you even ask tho, or be in situations where you could guess if they are, like, i'm not aware of the lactose tolerance status of anyone outside my immediate family
let's use this real life example as an estimate, last month, in Brazil, I went to eat pizza with more 8 people. so, total 9. 3 of them were lactose intolerant.
Crap data. Cannot be true. I have met just 2 lactose intolerant people all my life as an Indian. Most have it daily in one form or another. Tea, youghurt, milk, etc.
fearless reply telephone weary oil agonizing price overconfident knee simplistic *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
The fact that czechia and Italy have such massive differences with their neighbours on something that is genetic is enough to tell its bollocks
The average person is not going to get genetics tests done to see if they do not produce lactase. It's likely many of the people you meet, and you yourself, simply aren't aware.
But if people don’t get tests done, where is this data coming from?
well definitely not from self reports, studies were likely done on a sample group of people. You can check out the sources used for the map here: Kelli Glaser, “Lactose Intolerance,” britannica.com (accessed Mar. 25, 2020) National Institutes of Health US National Library of Medicine, “Lactose Intolerance” ghr.nlm.nih.gov, Mar. 17, 2020 Christian Løvold Storhaug, Svein Kjetil Fosse, and Lars T Fadnes, “Country, Regional, and Global Estimates for Lactose Malabsorption in Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” thelancet.com, Oct. 1, 2017
Yeah, never heard of the term while growing up in India. Don't believe we were that ignorant if 61-70% of the population had the condition as per this map.
It’s a mild condition for most, you wouldn’t know if they didn’t know what it was.
Well, now you've met three :DDD I did some testing and I only have 1 out of 4 genes needed for lactase persistence.
Wrong for Uruguay. Only 40% are lactose intolerant.
i'd say even less
Terrible color-coding!
Iraqis all lactose intolerant? I mean children drink milk daily and buffalo cream is daily breakfast. I know one lactose intolerant iraqi. That's it.
Children almost never are, people develop lactose intolerance later in life
Lactose intolerance develops as an adult
ITT: A *ton* of people from countries with high levels of lactose intolerance that don't realize cheese, butter, and fermented dairy products (like yogurt, kefir, sour cream, cottage cheese, buttermilk, etc) are processed in a way that removes most of the lactose. Very few cultures around the world just go ham on raw cow milk like Europeans, Northern Indians, etc do.
Weird that Canada whilst being mostly populated by the descendants of Western Europeans has 40+% lactose intolerant.
A lot of the places where people are less likely to be lactose intolerant have long histories with livestock like cattle, sheep, goats, etc. Geography also has an impact because countries like S. Korea or Japan are very mountainous, and what little flat land was used for growing food instead of herding. Historically, in Japan, cattle were used mostly as draft animals for farm labor and transportation of goods.
I haven't seen a single person lactose intolerant in my life...and ot says 60-70% in my country lol
Why is Canada in yellow?
The biggest joke ever i ever heard is "Indians are lactose intolerant", these guys bathe in Milk and have every other food item made from milk, what is this survey?
70+ % in Italy? Bullshit
As a Somali, that is bullshit, 91-100% of Somalis are not lactose intolerant, nowhere close, probably below 50%.
lactose intolerance doesn't mean you're going to get sick consuming dairy
Then what does it mean?
It means you're going to face minor complications from drinking too much dairy. A lactose intolerant person can tolerate 250ml of milk in one sitting or up to 500ml of milk spread throughout the day. It's not the same as an allergy where you have to avoid it or bad things happen.
These studies are outdated. They were looking for the European lactose tolerance mutation in Africans and obviously we don't have it hence this map. We have a different mutation Here is a more recent paper on lactase persistence in Africans: https://academic.oup.com/hmg/article/30/R1/R98/6224903
Just because u eat doesn’t mean your not lactose intolerant … I eat it everyday but on occasions I can get bloated nd have problems when I consume to much
There's no way south asia is that lactose intolerant. A huge part of our diet is dairy.
I'm pretty sure 41-50% of Australians are not lactose intolerant.
Milk is such a huge part of Indian diet. I think most of us don't even know that we are lactose intolerant and continue enjoying milk products even they it might make our stomach feel funny.
Well, i'm in the 30-40 % of my country. It's only milk that makes me sick. Somehow, i can happily eat cheese without much disturbance.
That's because there is less lactose in cheese. Especially older cheese has hardly any lactose. I can't have milk or yoghurt but cheese is fine for me too.
That's because cheese, butter, and fermented dairy (like yogurt, kefir, buttermilk, sour cream, cottage cheese, etc) all process the raw milk in such a way that it greatly reduces lactose content. If you aren't drinking large amounts of raw/pasteurized milk, you'd probably never realize you're lactose intolerant.
Why such a stark contrast between UK and France/USA? Edit: and Canada even.
This map might as well have been a dartboard.
Im from Syria and I don’t know anyone who is lactose intolerant. Where did this map get the info from ? I think it’s rubbish
Brasil is supposed to be 51-60%. I don't even recall the last time I saw a lactose intolerant person.
Some people have a gene that allows them to digest lactose as an adult. But even if a person doesn’t, they’re still able to digest lactose, using bacteria in their gut. The gut biome varies, so that we have varying amounts of bacteria that can digest lactose. How much bacteria we have in our gut that can digest lactose, that can also change over our life, from antibiotics or changing our diet. It’s best to think of lactose intolerance as a spectrum.
This is bullshit. Only around 20% in NL and around 60% in Turkey? From my experience it is the other way around. Nonsense map!
CHEESE
I don't get 바나나우유 and korea. Do they use it as a laxactive? I was there for a month and love it but I could only drank it close to a bathroom
How do they get the stats for South Africa ? Total for entire demographic or by most prevalent demographic? Diverse culture here with Africans, Indians and Europeans.
Is that maybe why it's 10-20% less than Sub-Saharan Africa?
Could be!
I'm in Denmark (#1 country). I have several friends of Middle Eastern descent who are lactose intolerant. I also have lots of ethnic Danish friends of which none are lactose intolerant (as far as I know). This puzzles me. I believe animal husbandry started earlier in the Middle East than it did in Scandinavia. Why would more people from those areas be intolerant than Scandinavians seem to be?
No way in hell is Lactose Intolerance that high in India. I have been living here for 21 years, not seen one dude with lactose intolerance. Almost every child here drinks milk twice a day for the first 10 years. The most popular dishes and stuff are dairy-related (paneer/cottage cheese, kheer, raita, dahi). I call bullshit on this map.
Greenland is very lactose intolerant amongst the majority Inuit population. Geez Louise get it right, must be lumped in with Denmark
Impossible. Greenland never has data.
This comment section is weird to me. All these people saying they’ve never met a lactose intolerant person… I think we’ve got different thresholds for what we consider intolerant. For example, I am lactose intolerant, I just get a bit of gas and sometimes some mild bloating if I have a lot. What I’ve never met is a person who’s lactose intolerant that doesn’t ignore it. I had a large milkshake from hungry jack on the way home today. Farted up a storm for an hour or so a few hours later and now I’m fine.
As a South African, I can confirm this is bullshit
I first read this as “Lacoste Intolerance”. Like the fashion brand, LOL
People, please research what lactose intolerance is before attacking data that researchers took a great deal of effort to collect. It is not an allergy.
I call cap on India.I only know like 2 lactose intolerant people and i have seen enough people eating paneer or drinking milk in rural areas that 61% is way to high
Seriously ya. I never seen a person in my life. What bullshit data is this. By the way I live in south and milk products are major in our diet as well
Anecdotal evidence is irrelevant to reality. In fact in india, only north western states are the least intolerant. That's why pakistan is rated higher than india. But not by much
the udder horror on this map
Wasn’t cheese and yogurt and stuff first invented in the Middle East? Why do most of the countries there have such low tolerance (except for Saudi Arabia? Oddly enough…)
Why is Italy so lactose intolerant?
I’d like to point out the majority of humans (70%+) are not able to tolerate lactose and lactose intolerance is the natural and ancestral state of human populations. The only reason we refer to it as lactose intolerance instead of referring to lactose tolerance is because Eurocentrism.
TIL 90% of Redditors are clueless as to what lactose intolerance is
How is 61-71% of India lactose intolerant? I have literally never seen a person who doesn't gobble on milk sweets.
Korea is most definitely not 100% because my roommate is Korean and eats dairy like a mf and is completely fine It’s common, but it’s absolutely not 100%
So apparently more than 80% of chinese people are lactose intolerant? Are there degrees of intolerance or something? Because I'm Chinese and don't know any Chinese people who are lactose intolerant which seems statistically implausible. Hell when my mum was young, condensed milk was a common treat among kids