cruel world
Out of context: Reply #20
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- harlequino0
per Jnr's link
"In many parts of the world, such as ancient China, Southeast Asia and Africa, temperatures were too extreme for cattle herding: too hot, too humid. They didn't depend on cattle as much as they depended on fishing and farming tropical plants. In Europe and northern Asia, the climate was ideal for cattle herding, so they consumed much more dairy, including cheese.Because the Chinese people lived for so long without consuming dairy, they developed lactose intolerance. Today, many Asians exhibit these ancestral side effects of lack of dairy in diet. And this is reflected in their culture: because they don't eat cheese, and can't digest it, they don't use it in their cooking.
See in India, because they have such a close religious association with cattle, they use butter and cream in the cooking, despite the hot climate. And in Tibet, which is culturally close to China, it is colder, and they have more yak. There, a lot of their diet depends on the yak, including its milk. They make tea and cheese with the milk.
And of course cheese spread to the Americas with...well, the Europeans colonizing the country. So it seems like most of the world likes cheese, but it's really easy to see why large groups of people never developed a taste for it."