"Milk does a body good" could have been a tagline dating back to the 15th century because it helped build strong human populations and societies.
In a research paper published by C. Justin Cook, he determined "that the consumption of milk increases the carrying capacity of a fixed quantity of land by increasing both the calories produced and through the qualitative improvements in diet from the high protein and other nutrients found in milk." Cook recently published those findings in the Journal of Economic Growth.
In a nutshell, milk, and perhaps more importantly the ability to digest the lactose found in milk via the enzyme lactase, helped grow European colonial-era civilizations. Those growth rates, in turn, helped propel the European continent through its achievements in the great exploration period that ensued from the 1500s and beyond. Alternatively, the two-thirds of humanity that stopped producing the enzyme lactase after weaning - about 2 years of age - had to get the energy and nutrients provided by milk from other food sources.
"People who could digest milk, the theory goes, used resources more efficiently than those who couldn't," wrote editors of The Economist in their March 28, 2015, edition. "They could extract energy from livestock, in addition to wool, fertilizer, plowing power and meat for which others raised them. The white stuff (milk) may have helped in other ways, too: its fats, proteins, vitamins and minerals added balance to the pre-colonial diet, reducing the incidence of disease," continued the editors of The Economist.
So how big a factor did milk ultimately play?
"A one standard deviation increase in the frequency of lactose persistent individuals (roughly 24 percentage points) was associated with roughly a 40 percent increase in pre-colonial population density," found Cook in his published research.
"All this suggests that milk guzzling societies could support higher population densities . . . ," concluded the editors of The Economist.
The founder of Hoard's Dairyman, W.D. Hoard, would concur with the findings of this research. For further proof, we quote one of Hoard's most famous statements: "The cow is the Foster Mother of the human race. From the day of the ancient Hindoo to this time have the thoughts of men turned to this kindly and beneficent creature as one of the chief sustaining forces of human life."
(c) Hoard's Dairyman Intel 2015
April 6, 2015
