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Traditional consumption of raw milk
Domesticated
animals were first used for milk eight to
ten thousand years ago, as a genetic change
effecting mostly people in Europe, the Middle
East, and parts of Africa enabled them to
digest milk as adults. Milk from domesticated
animals then began to become important as
a human food. With domestication and settlement,
fewer wild animals were available; as groups
of people roamed less, they hunted less, eating
more grains and vegetables. In some cultures,
milk replaced animal bones as the chief source
of calcium and some other minerals.
In
indigenous cultures where adults used milk,
often it was used as cultured or clabbered
milk. This is similar to homemade raw yogurt,
and it is partially predigested-much of the
lactose (milk sugar) has been broken down
by bacterial action. This process must be
accomplished over a period of several hours
in the stomach when one drinks fresh milk;
yogurt or clabbered milk is much more easily
digested than fresh milk.
Adaptations
in evolution are always the effects of particular
causes. Humans developing the ability to digest
milk into adulthood possessed a survival advantage;
such change is the basis of evolution. Put
simply, many human beings evolved the ability
to easily digest raw milk because raw milk
from healthy, grass-fed animals gave them
an adaptive advantage; it made them stronger
and more able to reproduce. Such milk remains
a wonderful food that provides us with fat-soluble
nutrients, calcium, and other minerals that
are by and large in short supply in the modern
diet.
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