Cheesy insights

This must be the least surprising study I've read about so far this year:

Researchers at Cornell University have shown in a recent study that lactose intolerance is largely a factor of cultural evolution. That is, members of ethnic groups that emerged in regions where raising cattle was common often are more genetically predisposed to digest milk products. Meanwhile, people whose ancestors came from regions where extreme temperatures, short growing seasons and dangerous animal-borne diseases made animal husbandry expensive and difficult often feel cramped and nauseous after eating dairy products.

In cheese-happy Denmark, for instance, only 2 percent of the population studied was lactose intolerant. In Zambia, near the equator, 100 percent of the individuals studied were lactose intolerant.

"The implication is that harsh climates and dangerous diseases negatively impact dairy herding and geographically restrict the availability of milk, and that humans have physiologically adapted to that," evolutionary biologist Paul Sherman, a professor of neurobiology and behavior at Cornell, said in a statement.