IMPORTANT NOTICE ABOUT COMMENTS

COMMENTS HAVE BEEN DISABLED

Because of spam, I personally moderate all comments left on my blog. However, because of health issues, I will not be able to do so in the future.

If you have a personal question about LI or any related topic you can send me an email at stevecarper@cs.com. I will try to respond.

Otherwise, this blog is now a legacy site, meaning that I am not updating it any longer. The basic information about LI is still sound. However, product information and weblinks may be out of date.

In addition, my old website, Planet Lactose, has been taken down because of the age of the information. Unfortunately, that means links to the site on this blog will no longer work.

For quick offline reference, you can purchase Planet Lactose: The Best of the Blog as an ebook on Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com. Almost 100,000 words on LI, allergies, milk products, milk-free products, and the genetics of intolerance, along with large helpings of the weirdness that is the Net.

Sunday, December 17, 2006

Your Cats May Be Mutants Too

Everybody knows that cats love milk. And everybody knows that you shouldn't give milk to cats because they're lactose intolerant just like humans. Right?

Maybe not.

An article by Regina and Douglas Haggo in The Hamilton Spectator drops an odd little tidbit in the middle of a comment on the much-talked about study that says Milk-Drinking Crucial to Human Evolution.

The availability of cows' milk turned a useless mutation into an invaluable one. Natural selection would favour people with the lactose-digesting gene switched on permanently, because they could profit from the calories, vitamins and minerals in milk.

Many European cat breeds show a similar mutation that allows them to enjoy milk as adults, while oriental breeds, like most Asian humans, are lactose-intolerant.

Is this true? Any cat-fanciers out there know the facts?

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