The bottom line is no, dairy products are not a nutritional requirement for humans. We can get all of the nutrients for optimal health from a high-quality diet that limits or contains no dairy.
Humans do not need to consume dairy milk to be healthy.
“The [USDA] recommended three cups per day of dairy milk is too high for most people. Humans do not need dairy milk in order to get all of the nutrients needed in a healthy diet,” according to Allison Childress, Chief Clinical Dietitian at…
The obvious answer is that drinking milk gave people a new source of nutrients, reducing the risk of starvation. But on closer inspection this doesn't hold up. “There's a lot of different sources of food, so it's surprising that one source of food is so important, so different from other sorts of food,” says Ségurel.
Most babies can digest milk without getting an upset stomach thanks to an enzyme called lactase. Up until several thousand years ago, that enzyme turned off once a person grew into adulthood — meaning most adults were lactose intolerant (or "lactase nonpersistent," as scientists call it).
Men and women should aim to consume three cups of milk each day. A cup is equal to 8 ounces of milk or yogurt. Cheese also counts!
CR: The best time would be around six months when the body is better able to digest solid food and the immune system is more matured. A large percentage of humans become lactose intolerant by age five and over 50 % of humans are lactose intolerant by age 50. Spoon: Are there any health benefits in drinking milk?
Now, scientists have found some of the oldest evidence yet for dairy drinking: People in modern Kenya and Sudan were ingesting milk products beginning at least 6000 years ago. That's before humans evolved the "milk gene," suggesting we were drinking the liquid before we had the genetic tools to properly digest it.
“However, a genetic trait called lactase persistence has evolved multiple times over the last 10,000 years and spread in various milk-drinking populations in Europe, central and southern Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Today, around one-third of adults in the world are lactase persistent.”
China, despite a growing interest in milk, is again near the very bottom, just above North Korea and Indonesia, where people basically don't drink milk. One last interesting tidbit is how milk consumption varies by age in a way soda and fruit juice consumption does not.
So dairy has been pivotal to nutrition and important to the survival of many populations in the world and most Europeans and North Americans are well adapted to digest it. So if you have been told that humans aren't adapted to have dairy in their diet, that isn't correct.
It's possible that the first Aurochs were milked 8,000 to 10,000 years ago in two different parts of the world, since domestication is attributed to cow-milking, but it's likely that European farmers were the first. As such, humans have been drinking cow's milk for about 6,000–8,000 years.
However, a genetic trait called lactase persistence has evolved multiple times over the last 10,000 years and spread in various milk-drinking populations in Europe, central and southern Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Today, around one third of adults in the world are lactase persistent.”
Humans are the only species to drink the milk of another, and researchers think the answer may lie in the desperation cause by famine and disease outbreaks. Milk and dairy products are so ubiquitous in our industry, it's easy to forget that humans are in fact the only species that drink the milk of another.
It contains enough fat and nutrients to feed her calf, who is born with four stomachs and gains hundreds of pounds in a matter of months, sometimes weighing up to 1,000 pounds before they're two years old. Therefore, cow's milk is not designed for human consumption.
Milk in the United States, unless marked otherwise, is treated with either rBST or rBGH, which are artificial hormones that stimulate milk production. The FDA says there is no difference in the milk produced by cows treated with the hormone, but countries like Canada and those in the European Union ban it.
The reason for this is due to milk pasteurization methods. “Milk is pasteurized through a process called ultra high temperature (UHT) in Europe, which kills the bacteria and can lead to a longer shelf life product without refrigeration,” explains Natalie Alibrandi, a UK-based food scientist and CEO of Nali Consulting.
Lactase nonpersistence is most prevalent in people of East Asian descent, with 70 to 100 percent of people affected in these communities. Lactase nonpersistence is also very common in people of West African, Arab, Jewish, Greek, and Italian descent.
Lactose intolerance is one of the more common food intolerances. Worldwide,it is thought that about 35% of people are unable to tolerate lactose. However, North Europeans, including Irish people, have a much higher tolerance for lactose, so only about 5% of Irish people are thought to be lactose intolerant.
Global consumption of fluid milk 2022, by country
In 2022, India consumed the most cow milk worldwide, drinking about 85 million metric tons. The next largest consumption of milk was in the European Union, at 23.8 million metric tons.
The country with the highest per capita consumption of fluid milk in 2022 was Belarus. The average person in Belarus consumed about 114.9 kilograms of milk in that year. Ukraine came in second with approximately 113.27 kilograms of fluid milk per person.
Although the inability to drink and eat dairy products (or more specifically the inability to digest lactose, the type of sugar found in milk) is commonly called “lactose intolerance”, this is actually a misnomer. All humans are lactose tolerant in early life because we are mammals.
Through analyzing degraded fats on unearthed potshards, scientists have discovered that Neolithic farmers in Britain and Northern Europe may have been among the first to begin milking cattle for human consumption. The dairying activities of these European farmers may have begun as early as 6,000 years ago.
Cows — especially those that have been bred for milking — produce more than seven gallons of milk every 24 hours. So while reindeer milk or goat milk might make sense for a herder providing only for their family, it's much easier to make a living with the amount of milk produced by cows.