There is a serious health epidemic sweeping through the human population and it’s passing unnoticed right in front of our eyes. Lactose intolerance affects about 65 percent of all people and, unfortunately, I am one of these victims.
Growing up, dairy was a part of nearly every single one of my meals. I had milk in my cereal for breakfast, a cup of yogurt in my lunch box and a stick of string cheese for a snack. In my kindergarten classroom, my teacher taught me to get 3-Every-Day of Dairy. I pretty much got five and passed by without any trouble.
I slowly lost my ability to digest dairy products as I grew older. I am forced to pass on a nice steamy cup of clam chowder on a rainy day and I can’t even get a Caramel Macchiato from Starbucks without paying an additional $0.60 for soy milk. I have to truly think about what I am eating and look at the labels to ensure that there is no dairy in any products that I eat because there will be hell to pay otherwise.
Everyday, I need to carry lactase enzyme pills in my wallet and backpack just so that I can have some of the most popular foods at school and at restaurants, but it is difficult to consistently remember to bring them with me wherever I go.
On far too many occasions, I have forgotten to bring my pills while going out to eat with my friends. The pain of passing on ordering a pizookie and watching my friends devour their beautiful concoction of cookie and ice cream nearly brings a tear to my eye.
Living this lactose free lifestyle has made me question why milk based products are so popular in our society. Why do humans continue to drink milk past the age of infancy and why do we drink milk from another animal? The fact that most people would cringe at the thought of even tasting a woman’s breast milk shows that it is pretty weird that milk is a large part of the average adult’s diet in Western society.
The mass consumption of dairy products began after 1862 when French microbiologist Louis Pasteur successfully conducted the first pasteurization test and revolutionized the safety of milk and, in turn, the ability to store and distribute milk well beyond the farm.
However, human evolution has not been able to keep up with the rapid rate of dairy consumption, which results in the suffering of people like me.
As years passed by, I grew accustomed to not having dairy in my diet. Many of the foods that I used to enjoy I now find to be pretty gross. Take cheese for example. What the hell is cheese? If you really think about it, it’s just a block of rotting milk and bacteria. Sounds gross if you ask me. And yogurt is just essentially the same thing but in puree form with probiotics. The way I see it, cheese and yogurt are just the Western dairy version of stinky tofu. Knowing all these things and given my lactose intolerance, I’ll pass on the cheese the next time I’m going to BJ’s to get a burger, but I’ll make sure to bring my pills and order myself that chocolate chip pizookie.