A Brief History Of Dairy & Lactose Intolerance In China

92% of the adult population in China are lactose intolerant. China is also the second largest consumer of dairy products in the world. How did these two seemingly irreconcilable facts become true? It’s a very interesting story based on science, taste, history, and health.

Children produce an enzyme that allows them to digest milk, but in much of the world, its levels taper off as they grow up. People of European descent are unusual in that they mostly continue to digest dairy effortlessly as adults. In China, around 40% lose the ability by age 13.

So why has there been such a huge boom in dairy consumption in a country where it makes people unwell if they drink it after childhood? Let’s dive into it!

For most of the 20th Century, milk had a low profile in China, but there were many tiny dairy farms in the northeast, with four cows a farm on average. Their milk made its way by train to the Russian-influenced city of Harbin, where most of it was made into butter & cheese.

By the 1980s there were now much larger dairies in the coastal cities, and powdered milk was a health product, and it was generally used for babies and for older folks. It was rationed per household, and was very prized.

Then, too, there was the phenomenon of White Rabbit candy. This Chinese confection is made of milk solids, like a chewy white caramel, and it’s said that one glass of milk equals seven pieces of candy. When Richard Nixon visited China, he was given White Rabbit as a gift.

By the 1990s and early 2000s, it was much easier to get liquid milk in China. Enormous dairy operations were built, some of the largest in the world, which were almost certainly cruel but increased dairy production & consumption a huge amount.

So how does the lactose intolerance scientists have recorded come into all this? One reason may be that a great deal of the dairy consumed in China is eaten as yoghurt. The fermentation process breaks lactose down, so there’s not much left to bother people.

As well, the volume of lactose consumed has a big effect on the subsequent gastrointestinal effects. If people don’t consume more than what’s in a cup of milk a day, they generally don’t run into trouble. A little bit of dairy every day is not likely to set people off.

It’s important to remember that food intolerances aren’t allergies, it’s just a difficulty in digesting certain quantities of some foods. You should stop if it’s making you unwell, but there may be a threshold you can consume the food up to!

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