Is Drinking Cow’s Milk Unnatural?
If you’ve been following along to my factual Friday musings, you’ll notice I’ve spent a lot of time talking about solar and farmland (including solar grazing) in these posts. That’s because it’s a topic that’s near and dear to my heart, both because that’s a huge chunk of our business at J&R Pierce Family Farm and also because it’s the topic of my upcoming book, “Agri-Energy: Growing Power, Growing Food.”
However, I have another book in progress at the moment, this time talking about some of the common misconceptions we have about our food and food system, along with how our separation from food production is creating massive problems at scale.
In my new book, I plan to discuss this concept of “food NIMBYism” and how our disconnect from agriculture is forcing us into very linear, black-and-white ways of thinking. “Eating meat is bad.” “Organic is the way to go.” And so on.
As part of my research for this second book, I’ve been thinking a lot about the history of our way of eating, and how humans have evolved over time to be able to eat (and enjoy eating) a variety of foods.
One of these happens to be dairy, so I wanted to write a Factual Friday discussing some of its nuances.
There are a lot of people who claim that the act of drinking milk or eating cheese (or other dairy products, for that matter) is inhumane, cruel, and unnatural.
To dissect that claim, I think we need to go back into history a bit.
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How Long Have Humans Been Drinking Milk?
Let’s start by getting this out of the way: yes, humans are the only animals that drink other animals’ milk. But we’re also the only animals that drive cars, talk on cellphones, and drink Diet Coke. So that may be a moot point.
And humans drinking milk is nothing new. There’s evidence of humans consuming dairy products from cows, sheep, and goats (as well as some other “unusual” suspects, like horses, reindeer, aurochs - early cattle - and camels) for at least the last 10,000 years, with milk from animals used to feed human infants for a large chunk of that time.
To say that drinking milk is unnatural for humans is a bit inaccurate, given how long it has been in our diets. To that end, you’d need to eliminate a large portion of the foods that have been in our diets throughout human history (if you’re going to make the argument that drinking almond milk is more natural, sorry to tell you - though wild almonds may have been eaten earlier, they weren’t domesticated until 3000 or 4000 BC and almond milk wasn’t documented until the 13th century).
The human gut has evolved to be able to consume animal milk over time. Indeed, we are the only species that can continue to drink milk after the time of weaning. Drinking milk provided a major evolutionary benefit as people moved from nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyles and began to domesticate livestock. Milk drinking is believed to have originated in Europe, which makes sense given that the harsh winter climate likely encouraged a shift to pastoral, agrarian lifestyles.
It makes a lot of sense. When you can’t grow or forage for plants for many months of the year, and wild game becomes scarce, you need a way to store calories and feed yourself through the cold period.
Living animals can “warehouse” energy and calories in the same way we rely on preservation and cold storage now. Relying on dairy and meat animals allowed early humans the ability to stretch their food supply longer into the cold season (or through other tough conditions, like drought).
The Rise of Lactase Persistence
Milk from non-human animals served a very important evolutionary purpose, allowing humans (including infants) the ability to live longer and grow stronger.
This ability for humans to digest milk sugars past infancy is a unique adaptation that, again, is exclusive to humans and is known as “lactase persistence.” Lactase persistence corresponds almost perfectly to the rise of agriculture.
Where things get complicated is that this evolutionary adaptation is not one that has endured throughout the entire population, and exists only in a certain subset of the population. It’s not like the ability to walk upright, which virtually all human beings have the ability to do thanks to evolution. Instead, this evolutionary ability applies to only some.
Raise your hand if you know somebody who is “lactose intolerant.” Lactose intolerance is not a food allergy. Sufferers do not break out in hives or experience anaphylaxis when they consume milk.
Instead, people who are lactose intolerant produce inadequate amounts of enzymes in their small intestines (lactase) to help them break down the sugars (lactose) in milk. It causes digestive problems like diarrhea, bloating, and gas.
Genetic Variations in Lactose Tolerance
Interestingly, lactose intolerance is more common in people of African, Asian, Hispanic, and Native American descent. It is seldom seen in those of European descent.
Why?
We likely weren’t always able to digest the sugars in milk, but likely, the ability to do so started with a genetic mutation that was then passed on to subsequent generations when it was clear that consuming milk provides a major evolutionary benefit.
In other words, the few oddballs who were able to digest milk were living longer, healthier lives, and were able to produce more offspring with the same “freakish” genetic mutations. Those who weren’t able to digest lactose could still consume it in small quantities through cheese, yogurt, etc, so the habit of raising animals for milk was one that persisted even when numbers of lactose-tolerant people were relatively low.
If you recall from earlier in my post, I wrote that the domestication of animals for milk likely began in Europe - in northern Europe today, it’s estimated that 90% of people are lactase persistent (aka - NOT lactose intolerant). Anywhere there was a significant presence of herding peoples, including Europe and Asia Minor, we tend to see lower rates of lactose intolerance today.
Is Raising Cows for Dairy Ethical?
Many people view the dairy industry as a cruel and unnatural one, forcing cows into lives where they exist solely to feed humans. Environmental degradation is another concern.
However, the same could also be said of the almond industry, which relies on intensive water usage in some of the world’s most water-hungry climates, including California. And if we’re talking about animal life, let’s talk about bees: millions of honeybees are trucked each year across the country to pollinate California almond trees. These bees often die in transit or shortly after being “worked”.
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with this, either. We’ve been moving bees across the country for decades (in the 1800s, they were moved on horses). It would be challenging to compare the environmental and “ethical” impact of the almond industry vs. cow dairy since the two industries are so dramatically different.
As far as nutrition goes, we can’t really break that down, either, since there are plenty of people who can’t consume almonds, and there are plenty of people who can’t consume cow’s milk.
But to argue that one is humane and one is not is a bit of a fallacy (at least, if you’re putting all life on the same level, which is to say, is a cow's life worth more than that of a bee? If so, why?). These are greater philosophical questions that I’m simply not equipped to answer.
In any event, you can’t make the claim that one is “unnatural” and one is not, since indeed, we’ve evolved to drink cow’s milk over many thousands of years.
Now, if you want to make the argument that it’s unnatural for us to drink Red Bull and Coca Cola, well…then that’s a conversation we can probably have. I don’t think evolution has quite caught up to us on that one yet.
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