• kristina [she/her]
    ·
    4 years ago

    neat. is it really? i thought the population in northern europe was 80-90%, whereas those areas were around 40-50%

    • lvysaur [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Nope. That's a combination of eurocentric sampling and white wewuzzery.

      The high lactose tolerant areas are northwest/central Europe, northwest India/Pakistan, Arabia, Mauritania, Fulani areas, Tutsi areas, several Somali/Ethiopian areas.

      The intermediate areas are Southern India, eastern Europe. Slavs in particular are around 50%, Greeks are majority intolerant (80%).

      • kristina [she/her]
        ·
        4 years ago

        is there a source for that? really curious about the numbers rn

        • lvysaur [he/him]
          ·
          edit-2
          4 years ago

          This is the map that was making the round in the 2000s. It's been proven completely wrong but people still post it. It's still up on wikipedia which is just more evidence the website is a eurocirclejerk: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Worldwide_prevalence_of_lactose_intolerance_in_recent_populations.jpg

          This is a more recent map, which is more accurate but still has problems. Note both the huge amount of samples in Europe, and the almost total exclusion of known Lactose Intolerant European areas (Balkans, Ukraine, Russia, etc): https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/Lactose_tolerance_in_the_Old_World.svg

          It is also worth noting that the medical lactose tolerance test is done with a quarter gallon's worth of lactose. So if you're "lactose intolerant" you can still drink milk, just not a quarter gallon in one sitting. This is why Greeks and Koreans aren't exploding.

          81% of Japanese are lactose TOLERANT when given a cup of milk: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1234085/

        • volkvulture [none/use name]
          ·
          4 years ago

          https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4700599/

          https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/05/study-raises-questions-about-roots-lactose-tolerance-africa

          https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/how-can-you-eat-dairy-if-you-lack-gene-digesting-it-fermented-milk-may-be-key-ancient

          this shit is interesting.