Rachel wrote:

> of milk products.  I don't have any problem with milk
> products but I'm northern european, celtic, slavic and
> germanic, and, I understand they are the group with
> the fewest problems(?).

Pretty odd that, when you think about it. This was one area
of the world that lagged thousands of years behind the rest
in adoption of agriculture. The Chinese were already making
ice cream 4000 years ago, when the northern europeans were
still chipping stone. Africans had domesticated cows, and
Mongolians had horses, sheep etc. There is no time gap in
favor of northern europe to explain milk tolerance. Rather
the opposite.

The Japanese have spent the last thousand years with a
religious ban on farming animals, milk drinking was almost
unknown that whole time, and could not have been common
before that either. But the Japanese now drink lots of milk,
in many forms.

Something else must be going on. Maybe the much debated
bambi cheese theory? Or maybe it really is all cultural, any
group can gain or lose milk tolerance just be adding milk or abstaining.

Milk is one of those things I don't try to avoid, but don't
try to add either. I drink the kids left over milk in my
coffee, things like that. I do tend to use a lot of cream,
on berries and in home made ice cream though. Probably doing
all kinds of terrible things to myself...  ;--)