The_Waspman said:
JopieHaargel said:
Furthermore, you wouldn't even believe what happens when you slice it!
But you are right. For that matter: anything that's baked or fried in some way... How did people discover how to make pancakes, pie, that sort of stuff. Was it just trial and error until someone said "We might be on to something here" ? These are trivialities I like to think about!
Wait, you can
slice it!? Thats not just the work of wizards, but
space wizards.
One also has to wonder how we started drinking cows milk. Or more rather why.
The majority of the world population is lactose intolerant.
Our ability to digest lactose - which is called lactase persistence, if you want to look it up- is a very recent evolution. Of course only possible since after our ancestors domesticated the cow.
Milk offers a good supply of vitamin D, fat and proteins. In fact, using a goat or a cow for it's milk yields 4 to 5 times more energy for the human body than one could get out of the meat of the animal.
It was most likely just evolution at it's finest. Consider one settlement, with two groups of people: people with no lactose-digesting capability, and people who could digest it, but not very well. During a time of bad climate, scarce food, etc..., people started drinking milk out of desperation, maybe. Only those who could sort of digest lactose lived. Some of their children would be lactose-intolerant, some slighly able to digest lactose like their parents, some a little bit better. The ones who digested it better were able to survive... and so on until they got the gene for Lactase Persistence.
DNA research has shown that there are several places around the world where people developped lactase persistence. For Europeans, this was some 9.000 years ago in Central Europe.
Another theory is about the vitamin D - which is contained in milk, but also created in our skin when in contact with sunlight. Strangely enough, southern Europe is very lactose-intolerant, while northern Europe is mostly entirely capable of digesting lactose. (The ancient Romans were disgusted when they learned the Brits drank milk)
Simply put, we don't know yet, but it's being researched.
