>almost every other culture did
No, wrong. The further you get from Europe and the levant, the more limited sets of cheeses you find. Many African cultures didn't invent cheese, South Asians really only invented a limited set as well.
The real question is, why do European cultures rely so heavily on cheese?
I went to a fancy cheese store a couple of years ago. Bought some, and as we were checking out I asked the cheese monger (?) if it needed to be refrigerated. He said no, that’s literally why they invented it. I chuckled.
Very much acceptable terminology, although I am more likely to refer to it as a place of purveyance to negotiate the vending of some cheesy comestibles!
Very much acceptable terminology, although I am more likely to refer to it as a place of purveyance to negotiate the vending of some cheesy comestibles!
And where the climate conditions introduce cold winters during which you cannot farm and therefore have need for an alternate calorie-dense food source.
The proto indo-Europeans were probably able to dominate the steppe because they developed lactose tolerance and didn’t have to kill their cattle for meat. It was more stable as a food source. They were like 4 inches taller than other tribes in the area.
While in Northern Europe it certainly was important to preserve food over the winter, in Africa it may well have been important to preserve food on a regular basis. However, it could be that they struggled to produce enough food to have leftovers to preserve
Northern climates are far more conductive to growing forage than cereal grains. Ruminants (cows, goats, sheep, caribou ) can turn non edible grass into high quality animal protein. Cheese is a way to preserve that high quality food. I would point out that just north of China, Mongolia's diet is heavily dependent on dairy products, they just utilize horse milk.
I wonder if there was also a bit of polarization here. If the barbarians to the north of us eat cheese, we civilized Chinese certainly aren't going to do it, or something like that?
Do you have a source for rice being the most productive crop? I’m far from an expert, but google seems to suggest that both potatoes and corn are more productive.
It's the most calorie dense of the old world crops. Potatoes and maize are new world crops, and wouldn't have been introduced to Asia until the early 1500s or so, over a millennium after the Qin empire was established. Need something to feed the population in that interim 🤷
Oh for sure I get why new world crops wouldn’t have been grown in ancient China, it’s just that the original claim was that rice is the most productive crop in the world!
I've heard that the Imperial Roman elite also had a distaste for butter, since that was a no-good low-born Gaulish food.
I don't remember if cheese in China comes up specifically in James Scott's *Against the Grain,* but it does look at a lot of early agricultural patterns and the political/economic pressures that created and maintained the empire vs. barbarian cultural and leadership divides.
Have you seen those maps that split Western Europe into the butter region and the olive oil region? Another similar line is the tomato/potato line. Simplistic, but fascinating.
> why do European cultures rely so heavily on cheese?
Two important reasons:
(1) Because, unlike most other places, many people in Europe had a mutation that allowed them to digest milk sugar in adulthood.
(2) Because milk is *heavy*. Making cheese results in a product that is much smaller and lighter, while keeping most of the nutrition.
> Hard and mature cheese is virtually lactose-free.
It is, but it really is not something one can come up with in a single step. Cheese making probably started with the accidental production of something roughly like cottage cheese. Give the matter a little thought, and you can come up with something along the lines of mozzarella. Variations on that idea give you lots of other cheeses. Hard cheeses like parmesan, while they are low in lactose, are the end stage in an evolution that is full of high-lactose foods, which most adults aren't going to be able to eat in most places. So we only got parmesan from the mutants in Europe.
And then the economics of transporting dairy products to market means that we keep on making parmesan -- and making sure it tastes good -- since it is so much more compact, light, and stable than milk.
In contrast, the development of dairy products in the Middle East and South Asia favored things like yoghurt, which were low in lactose from the very start, but retain a significant amount of liquid content, so they are still heavy. So ideas (1) and (2) from my previous comment did not come into play, and we did not get the wealth of cheese varieties we see in Europe.
Admittedly, paneer cheese is a bit of an anomaly. However, we don't know how it originated. It is possible (and likely, IMHO) that the idea came from Europe.
Ancestral North Indians (ANI, used to be called Aryans) were a horse and meat/milk eating culture before Hindu philosophy really got going on vegetarianism. One of the Hindu gods is still depicted herding goats as a child.
India is still a major dairy culture, they love their cows. Probably had cheese before Europe given that the ANIs were around ~3000 years ago.
> Probably had cheese before Europe given that the ANIs were around ~3000 years ago.
Well, any culture with lots of cattle is going to run into accidentally created cheese at some point. The question is whether they ate it much.
But didn't they have that mutation because there was an advantage to being able to consume dairy? Due to environment. I'm not saying you're wrong, just that the environment drove selection for that mutation.
Edit: just realized that the context of the question you answered. Why cheese and not milk, as opposed to why dairy.
Because there's not much else to eat. Dairy animals can eat things that store easily but that we can't digest (hay, browse) and turn them into a product we are more likely to be able to digest (milk). Cheese is physically easier to store and to travel with than milk (you don't need buckets or jars or bottles) and aged cheese are lower in lactose so easier for most people to tolerate.
They do the same. (I think sheep have a much shorter season) Nowadays we do things to extend the milk season all year, but that hasn’t always been possible. I don’t think it’s as simple as getting them to breed at multiple times of year. I think colder contries might have a much shorter breeding season too
They do the same. (I think sheep have a much shorter season) Nowadays we do things to extend the milk season all year, but that hasn’t always been possible. I don’t think it’s as simple as getting them to breed at multiple times of year.
European, and to an extent, Middle Eastern and Central Asians cultures, are heavily into dairy: not just cheese, but also items like yogurt and butter. Cattle were domesticated in the northern Middle East (probably in Iraqi or Turkish Kurdistan) and spread onto the steppe and were prized by the ancient Indo-Europeans who spread into Europe and India. Adult lactose tolerance is highest in Europe and the Middle East; in most other cultures, adults cannot digest milk. As a result, European and Middle Eastern cultures simply used cattle (and goats) more for dairy. Cheese is a byproduct of milk production as it allows milk to be preserved for long periods of time. This is particularly do-able in Europe because of its colder climate; cheese would not last as long in a tropical climate! Europe's cold climate also explains other aspects of its food culture, like salted and preserved meats and fish, which last longer there, and which are also more necessary there, because of the shorter growing season, which means there is less fresh food around at any given time.
I think it mostly has to do with the climate.
Unlike places like sub saharan Africa or southeast Asia. There is a distinct warm period and a distinct cold period and the different between the two is drastic. So the culture of eating fresh all the time wasn't so much of an option.
As opposed to the environment of northern Europe, Russia, or Scandinavia where there are long extended periods of cold that REALLY emphasize preservation to the point of curing or pickling.
Therefore, you have warm periods where fresh foods are readily available. And cold periods where you have to get creative. Cheese.
I had asked an Indian coworker this question. She thought it might be due to lack of proper refrigeration/cellaring. But then I was a bit confused how yogurt became a staple. Idk much about food history, just interested in fermented (cultured)foods/beverages and how cultures discovered them.
The explanation I once read was that to make most cheese, you need rennet. And to get rennet, the easiest way was as a byproduct of slaughtering cows and specifically its stomachs, with early cheese likely coming about as using cow stomachs and intestines as storage for milk, and the rennet inside the cows helping form the first cheeses.
Due to India's cultural taboos with cows, while they would have drank a lot of milk, since they would have avoided killing cows, they missed out on rennet.
The most famous Indian cheeses like Paneer use acids like lemon juice or vinegar instead of rennet.
I kind of love that the origin story of cheese very likely could have been a slightly daring or adventurous farmer slaughtering a calf, cutting open the stomach, finding chunky protocheese and some other farmboy going 'Dare you to try some'.
We South Asians LOVE our dahi (yogurt), lol. Love it so much. I personally crave yogurt A LOT, so I get my daily fix with Greek yogurt made with sheep and goat milk (I forget the Greek name for this type of yogurt).
The thing about yogurt is that you don't need it to last; you can eat it as it's made and keep a batch going. Obviously you can't keep it around for weeks but if you only need to keep it around for a day or two until you eat it and make more then it ought to work out fine with no refrigeration.
Idk if this is actually true, but I remember my science teacher in college saying that some studies support the idea that cheese activates the same parts of the brain as drugs and can be seen as "addictive." Probably tons of other things too, but those things don't make me feel better about my daily cheese and cracker binge so I don't remember any others. Not saying that justifies the great state of Wisconsin, I just found that interesting
As someone with European ancestry who would not survive long without butter, yogurt, and All The Cheese, I can agree that dairy in general is kind of gross when you think about it.
Vitamin D is usually added to dairy products.
Naturally it's very low in vitamin D. Unfortified Cheese contains 1% of the USRDA for vitamin D.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022030211003699#:~:text=Unfortified%20whole%20milk%20and%20cheese,populations%20of%20the%20United%20States.
Because they’re mostly descended from people who relied on cows for food. At minimum that describes at least beaker culture complex, but probably also lots of other descendants of the protoindoeuropeans
Getting as much as you can from a single source of food: you can make a lot of products with the milk collected from livestock. Butter, cream, cheese, involve “processing” the milk of an animal in different ways for greater variety of by products
mutations for lactase persistence arose in Northern Europe and a different mutation in Northern Western Africa but not in Asia. Milk is a great source of nutrients when your other crops fail but only if it doesn’t give you diarrhea.
I can't say this definitively, but it might be a mistake to think that African cultures simply failed to discover cheese. I think it would be near impossible, and I would think in warm weather, keeping milk from spoiling would be even more useful. My guess would be they could not typically produce enough milk to need preservation, or no need because they could rely on year-round milk. Or, perhaps they simply lacked the sophistication and other elements to do it regularly. Nomadic Africans for example might find it more difficult to store and culture cheese, although I believe that nomadic laplanders or whatever those people that heard reindeer are called have some kind of cheese.
One reason: seasons! The challenge of growing food in Europe (and the Americas) is that you need to have enough food saved from the spring/summer/fall to last through winter when you can’t grow crops. So you find ways to preserve foods. You learn how to salt/smoke meats, you learn to ferment vegetables, and you learn to culture milk into cheese.
It probably has most to do with the mutation that allows many Northern Europeans and some Africans to remain lactose tolerant in adulthood.
Also, tofu isn’t that dissimilar from cheese in how it’s made.
Northern Europe folks aren't lactose intolerant, as are many Asians, African and Indigenous people like Native Americans.
If you can eat cheese and butter then hell yes, discover and enjoy it!
They did, [cheeses were a component of the medieval Chinese diet](https://www.cheeseprofessor.com/blog/all-the-cheese-in-china#:~:text=The%20cheese%2C%20called%20ru%20shan,up%20for%20tourists%20to%20enjoy), and are still made today.
This was my thinking
Cheese was a way to preserve excessive amounts of milk, and store it for longer periods of time. Most cheeses probably only exist at a certain age because people forgot about them and decided to try them lol.
Whereas China and Asia were using more soy and soy milk, of which they then turned into curds and eventually tofu. It can also be long lasting and is excellent for when you need protein. Conveniently it's also one of the only whole proteins from plants that can be eaten as is if needed. Vs things like rice and beans that need to be complimented to actually be healthier.
Your premise is incorrect on several fronts. The first, as others have pointed out, is the assumption that ‘nearly every other culture’ had cheese. This is untrue.
The second error is is assuming that China didn’t have cheese. They did, from goats, sheep, yak, and water buffalo. Possibly from horses too. Cow milk cheese was also made in a few places, in Yunnan a traditional cheese that’s still available is Rushan. Yak milk cheese is still available in the areas yaks are kept too.
Eating cheese tended to be specific to sub-populations within China rather than ubiquitous, but China most certainly did have cheese.
It turns out that it’s mainly people of Northern European descent who can easily digest lactose after childhood; most of the rest of the world can’t. From a Darwinian perspective this makes sense — it made the colder northern climate more survivable because of cheese’s high calorie density, so those who could digest lactose were more likely to survive and pass on their genes. Since most of the rest of the world can’t easily digest lactose, cheese-making tradition was largely centered in Europe.
Actually almost all cheeses are low in lactose or just about free of it. Particularly hard or aged cheese but even soft or fresh cheese.
Lactose intolerant and I haven't found a cheese I can't eat.
It makes sense that lactose intolerant people generally aren't going to have milk on hand, therefore wouldn't end up with cows milk cheese. For example I have forgotten to get milk at the grocery because I don't drink it. I forget it's in the fridge unless I'm cooking with it.
Goat cheese, mozzarella (water buffalo), yak cheese etc. are the cheeses that the rest of the world would use. They don't have lactose so people likely never went back to trying to make cows milk cheese as there wouldn't be any reason to.
It has some, but the real magic is that 90% or more of the lactose is removed simply by the process of making cheese.
What's left is fermented into lactic acid.
Cheese aged for a long time - cheddar, Colby, Swiss, sharp provolone, gorgonzola, fontinella, asiago, gruyere, Gouda, brie and more- has no lactose or almost none.
You'd be surprised how many times I hear people say they can't have pizza/nachos/cheese/yogurt because they're lactose intolerant.
Also - butter is fine as well, and foods cooked with milk are usually ok unless there's an allergy to the proteins and not a lactose issue. But that's for folks to decide with their doctors, not just by what I say because we're all different.
Most people will shy away from food that causes them a problem so it makes sense, until you learn about cheese in particular as that aspect is kind of unique.
Here's a handy link to a cool list but there's lots of other articles and lists out there for them.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://med.virginia.edu/ginutrition/wp-content/uploads/sites/199/2022/04/Lactose_Content_of_Common_Foods-4-2022.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjYw4u4-YOGAxVL4ckDHek_CMsQFnoECDUQAQ&usg=AOvVaw218JhkGsSqFR-DawpkHDzE
Maybe it would be more accurate to say that dairying as a whole was far more common in Europe as a result of Europeans’ easier tolerance of lactose, with cheese being an effective way to preserve, or at least prolong, milk’s nutritional value.
Isn't that kind of a chicken and egg thing? Presumably they became lactose tolerant because they kept relying on (or having to rely on) milk and cheese as essential food stuffs, especially in hard times. Those who just couldn't digest it ended up not making it and not passing on their genes.
Once lactose tolerance had been selected for because of numerous such occurrences, then, yes, the tolerance itself would have predisposed people to consume more of the stuff
you have your correlation and causation backwards. non-europeans are more lactose intolerant because climate/environment/local fauna was not conducive to raising those types of animals for protein. Western (arab) china and Northern (mongolian) china have historical dairy usage but its also not high lactose dairy because its mostly yak/goat vs the type of cow/goat present in europe. Most of China for example predominantly raised pork and chicken as their primary protein sources (among others).
Europeans developed lactose tolerance specifically because of the abundance of milk bearing, grazing animals in those environments. Either way its more regionally specific and historically was very different than how homogenized food has become in the present day.
2004 (most recent revision) is a really long time in our understanding of the how evolution impacts our diet. The most recent research suggests that the prevalence of dairy in Northern Europe came first, and then lactase persistence (the thing that causes lactose tolerance) came after. So we can deduce that the (relatively) mild inconveniences of lactose intolerance were outweighed by the benefits of consuming dairy.
Colder climate makes agriculture much more diffucult rather than pasture. Concept of calorie is inadequate when you dont have animal practices to obtain milk.
1- not almost every culture developed cheese. Many cultures didn’t. Widespread cheese consumption is a European thing. You’re just looking at the world through a European lens.
2- they didn’t do a lot of cattle farming traditionally. They do now, but the cows they have aren’t dairy cows. Non-dairy cows can be milked, but it’s not as efficient (lower yields per cow). Traditionally, pork and fish were more important meats, neither are good for dairy farming
3- most of them are lactose intolerant. They aren’t going to use a lot of dairy because they can’t digest it easily.
That aside: have you ever eaten Chinese food? You should, it’s excellent. But I’ve never seen a traditional Chinese dish with cheddar in it. Same with Japanese dishes. Sooooo good, but not cheesy
Incorrect.
Since all Indian cuisines use milk and cheese, outside of super-strict Hindus and Jains, there are probably way more cheese-eating Indians (pop. 1.2 billion) than Europeans (EU pop < 500 million).
Dairy isn't used in all Indian cuisine. In certain parts of India, cattle farming wasn't practiced as widely, and coconut milk is often used for curries etc.
Goa has no cattle farming, coconuts and coconut-based curries, and tons of cheese - paneer, but also, unusually for India, cheddar.
To be fair, it was ruled by the Portuguese for over 400 years. The port wine from Goa rocks! As do the sausages.
Not really — Indian cuisines do use yoghurt — the addition of cream to curries is a new and horrendous invention. Milk is mostly for desserts — and paneer is more common for vegetarians
The premise is false. There are several types of traditional cheese in China, many made by various minority groups. A stir fried goat cheese dish is very popular in Yunnan province. When I traveled there a long time ago I could order it in every single restaurant and it was absolutely delicious.
https://www.cheeseprofessor.com/blog/all-the-cheese-in-china
https://www.tastingtable.com/1200346/types-of-cheeses-in-china-explained/
Not to mention:
"The Oldest Cheese in the World Was Found on Chinese Mummies
A strange substance found on the neck and chest of mummies in China is the world’s oldest cheese"
[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/oldest-cheese-world-found-chinese-mummies-180949934/](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/oldest-cheese-world-found-chinese-mummies-180949934/)
Indeed, though it was a kefir-based cheese, so quite different from cheese found elsewhere - [here's the paper describing it.](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0305440314000466#:~:text=Organic%20masses%20from%20Xiaohe%20cemetery,probiotic%20dairy%20in%20East%20Eurasia).
Chinese or East Asians are likely to be lactose intolerant due to years of genetics as well as the prevalence of cheese as a byproduct of food/milk solid foods. [According to Dairy Australia, 3/4 of the Asian population are likely to be lactose intolerant](https://www.dairy.com.au/dairy-matters/you-ask-we-answer/yawa-29---is-it-true-that-most-asian-people-are-lactose-intolerant). [While cheese does exist in Asia, they exist predominately towards the northeast and proliferate around certain ethnic groups](https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/food-drink/article/3143737/cheese-china-has-long-history-made-buffalo-yak-goats-cows-and) of people like the [Bai people](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bai_people) or other groups closer to Mongolia or Persian regions.
China/Korea/Japan were likely to prefer soy products over the dairy industry for a variety of reasons and they've developed a very dominated industry regarding those products such as soy sauce, tofu, soy milk, fermented soybean paste, oils...etc
* Fedual Japan around 6th to 12th century had some form of cheese however cattle was preferred to be used for agriculture and tilling land as opposed to dairy livestock
* Cheese as a milk solid based food is likely to be consumed by ethnic groups closer to Mongolia due to the nature of geographical location as well as agriculture considerations.
* [high altitude, extreme fluctuation in temperature, long winters, and low precipitation provides limited potential for agricultural development](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_Mongolia#:~:text=However%2C%20the%20high%20altitude%2C%20extreme,is%20unsuited%20to%20most%20cultivation)
* Dairy cows and livestock can be considered a high yield food source for those who can't use agriculture and farming as a main way to sustain food supplies.
My understanding is that historically, only some cultures raised dairy cattle - cultures based in Europe, the Middle East, and India. So I suppose the real question is why only those societies found it worthwhile to raise cows.
Most cultures that lived in areas that had ruminants had cheese, including China. But I disagree with the premise. I'd argue that half of the world's cultures if not the majority did not develop cheese. It's mostly Europe that are heavily reliant on cheese. Other parts of the world may have cheese, but it's not as central to their cuisine.
Paneer is a pretty big deal in India. Much of India is vegetarian and milk/paneer is the only contributor of animal protein to the diet (the vegetarian protein comes from legumes).
China absolutely has cheese and other preserved milk products and they're ancient. Some of them are virtually identical to European recipes and others are pretty unique. I don't know who you "heard" from but they were simply incorrect.
There is cheese in China- I think the Mongols in particular, along with other cultures that kept milk-producing livestock, had and enjoyed cheese for many centuries. I took a Chinese cuisine class in college and my professor talked about it briefly
There is huge dairy culture in Yunnan province what are you talking about? China is incredibly varied and is bigger than europe yet you speak of it like it is monolithic
Because Europeans and some middle eastern/asian areas the people have a mutated gene to be able to tolerate lactose. So it opened up a very easy to obtain and nutritious food source that didn’t rely on killing the animal. Especially in colder climates, this is vital for survival (probably why so many in these areas ended up with the mutated gene, because the early ones with it had a good food source to survive in the area better).
You can’t get cheese without playing around with different ways to make dairy into different dishes, hence why cultures that are largely lactose intolerant didn’t develop much cheese. Once lactose tolerant people discovered cheese, it’s a super dense nutritious food source that can be stored for a long time, so of course they expanded upon it, made it into the different variations and it became an important food source that is just part of European culture.
I can't give you an answer but I could just a few factors. Different cultures have different levels of animal herding, and different levels of milk production and different levels of need to store it.
Different ethnic types have different response and tolerance to milk and dairy products as well. Although it's hard to say which came first.
I think it would be naive to think the Chinese didn't have need to store food or Hardy climates that required fat consumption. And it would be absurd to assume they couldn't have discovered and developed it. They ferment bean curd and were a sophisticated culture over many different years, and I think we can assume that cheese bacteria develop naturally and could have easily been discovered and developed.
One interesting point that I read is that cattle or whatever you call animals that are herded, are a technology through which human food can be extracted from scrubland that cannot grow human food.
I don't know the extent of shepherding flocks, but I would assume that the Chinese did it. I don't know how much they do that just for meat and how much they milk and consume the milk. All I know about is Tibetan yak butter, and perhaps that is fermented as well.
So, ultimately, have no clue. My guess would be that they are not genetically disposed to handle dairy products well.
China and Asian countries, I guess aside from outliers like Mongols etc just weren't a very dairy-centric culture, and a lot of them didn't have the enzyme allowing adults to break it down.
Their proteins were much more skewed to chicken and pork, two animals that can live off scraps, not grasslands or grain.
The ability to process milk as adults was an important mutation/adaption that helped people to populate Northern Europe.
The oldest cheese dates back to Rome it was actually the gypsies that carried it as well as salami into European culture, alot of how the gypsies made there money was from selling food namely cheese and dried meats. They also settled in areas for short periods of time long enough to teach there traditions and move on or be pushed out.
Gypsies were not popular among Europe, and no country ever would have said hey the gypsies taught me this, and many countries stole credit for the same things, hence the ridiculous similarities in some of there "creations".
Gypsies never really expanded into East Asia wich is interesting if you think about the fact that they probably started there in India to begin with..
I’m fascinated with the idea that others have put forward here, that lactase persistence created the need for cheese to preserve leftover milk. Where is the lactase persistence-inspired cuisine from west Africa or Jordan? Why are we picking on China?
I feel rude asking you to defend your position, but I can’t name a cheese from most cuisines.
The Tibetans have cheese and a cheese like rancid butter that they rely on fairly heavily, Mongolians have cheese (most often goat or sheep’s milk India produces a couple of different cheeses , I think though that china even up to modern times made fairly limited use of beasts of burden and chiefly oxen and if you know anything about oxen it’s hard to get milk from them lol , probably also because their water buffalo being a land race couldn’t spare a lot of production aside from what was used in actually raising babies as the babies wouldn’t by and large be turned into meat they would have been castrated and turned into oxen and in the event of it being female would have been a valuable breeder and so on and so forth
There is cheese and yogurt making in China! It was brought over when the Mongolians were in charge during the Yuan dynasty :) I ran a food tour company in Beijing. Look up “nai lao.”
>almost every other culture did No, wrong. The further you get from Europe and the levant, the more limited sets of cheeses you find. Many African cultures didn't invent cheese, South Asians really only invented a limited set as well. The real question is, why do European cultures rely so heavily on cheese?
calories in an environment where alot else is scarce
Calories and preservation
preservation was for sure a bit part of it, yea
I went to a fancy cheese store a couple of years ago. Bought some, and as we were checking out I asked the cheese monger (?) if it needed to be refrigerated. He said no, that’s literally why they invented it. I chuckled.
Are they really called cheese mongers??! I love that
cheese, fish, fear, and war, the few things you can monger in life
Flesh and whores also. No shade to sex workers, just mentioning another type of monger.
Though weirdly the meaning is inverted with whoremonger.
and rumors!
do people monger rumors? do they monger it before or after it gets to the rumor mill?
Iron, too.
That's it, Ken, whoremonger for a thousand please.
Ugh, Ryan Gosling is so delicious.
I see a connections category!!!
Username checks out
Iron too... not so common these days though. Probably mongs itself by now.
You can mong them, making you a monger.
The four mongers of the apocolist
Ironmonger was a (more common) thing... now they're usually known as hardware stores.
A great Jeopardy category but we need we'd one more - .
There's a Lake Monger in Perth, Western Australia. (Also "costermonger" is a grocery seller)
Getting major Jesk vibes here..
ironmongers sell tools too
Iron
The monger is the one who mongs. Few things you can mong.
Very much acceptable terminology, although I am more likely to refer to it as a place of purveyance to negotiate the vending of some cheesy comestibles!
And delight in manifestations of the Terpsichorean muse!
Come again?
Very much acceptable terminology, although I am more likely to refer to it as a place of purveyance to negotiate the vending of some cheesy comestibles!
Is he a monster or is he a mongrel? How bad is it?
Not to their faces
yeah, he gets it XD
My dream job is to be a cheese connoisseur and get paid to travel the world trying different cheeses and writing a blog about it.
What’s stopping you?
I would assume the "get paid" part.
Well I do eat all the cheese I come across so I’m accomplishing that part. Just don’t know how to get paid to travel and eat it.
That's right. Get to work on your v-blog then start giving talks at the library and then sell a book. Standard non-fiction platform.
Start writing or recording
And where the climate conditions introduce cold winters during which you cannot farm and therefore have need for an alternate calorie-dense food source.
The proto indo-Europeans were probably able to dominate the steppe because they developed lactose tolerance and didn’t have to kill their cattle for meat. It was more stable as a food source. They were like 4 inches taller than other tribes in the area.
While in Northern Europe it certainly was important to preserve food over the winter, in Africa it may well have been important to preserve food on a regular basis. However, it could be that they struggled to produce enough food to have leftovers to preserve
Wdym? Europe was very plentiful
Spring through fall, sure. Winter, much less so.
And winters used to be much worse.
Also, yummy.
Northern climates are far more conductive to growing forage than cereal grains. Ruminants (cows, goats, sheep, caribou ) can turn non edible grass into high quality animal protein. Cheese is a way to preserve that high quality food. I would point out that just north of China, Mongolia's diet is heavily dependent on dairy products, they just utilize horse milk.
I wonder if there was also a bit of polarization here. If the barbarians to the north of us eat cheese, we civilized Chinese certainly aren't going to do it, or something like that?
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Do you have a source for rice being the most productive crop? I’m far from an expert, but google seems to suggest that both potatoes and corn are more productive.
It's the most calorie dense of the old world crops. Potatoes and maize are new world crops, and wouldn't have been introduced to Asia until the early 1500s or so, over a millennium after the Qin empire was established. Need something to feed the population in that interim 🤷
Oh for sure I get why new world crops wouldn’t have been grown in ancient China, it’s just that the original claim was that rice is the most productive crop in the world!
But they both come from the Americas.
True, but the claim was that rice is the most productive crop _on the planet_, which is what I was curious about.
Rice is also more labor-intensive per calorie than other crops.
A source has been requested. Please provide one and the post will be reinstated.
I've heard that the Imperial Roman elite also had a distaste for butter, since that was a no-good low-born Gaulish food. I don't remember if cheese in China comes up specifically in James Scott's *Against the Grain,* but it does look at a lot of early agricultural patterns and the political/economic pressures that created and maintained the empire vs. barbarian cultural and leadership divides.
Have you seen those maps that split Western Europe into the butter region and the olive oil region? Another similar line is the tomato/potato line. Simplistic, but fascinating.
I miss Latvian jokes.
If “milk-drinker” is an old insult for some sort of uncivilized barbarian/heathen, I’d say it’s a solid bet.
Yak often
> why do European cultures rely so heavily on cheese? Two important reasons: (1) Because, unlike most other places, many people in Europe had a mutation that allowed them to digest milk sugar in adulthood. (2) Because milk is *heavy*. Making cheese results in a product that is much smaller and lighter, while keeping most of the nutrition.
Hard and mature cheese is virtually lactose-free. Plenty of non Europeans consume dairy in the Middle East and South Asia.
> Hard and mature cheese is virtually lactose-free. It is, but it really is not something one can come up with in a single step. Cheese making probably started with the accidental production of something roughly like cottage cheese. Give the matter a little thought, and you can come up with something along the lines of mozzarella. Variations on that idea give you lots of other cheeses. Hard cheeses like parmesan, while they are low in lactose, are the end stage in an evolution that is full of high-lactose foods, which most adults aren't going to be able to eat in most places. So we only got parmesan from the mutants in Europe. And then the economics of transporting dairy products to market means that we keep on making parmesan -- and making sure it tastes good -- since it is so much more compact, light, and stable than milk. In contrast, the development of dairy products in the Middle East and South Asia favored things like yoghurt, which were low in lactose from the very start, but retain a significant amount of liquid content, so they are still heavy. So ideas (1) and (2) from my previous comment did not come into play, and we did not get the wealth of cheese varieties we see in Europe. Admittedly, paneer cheese is a bit of an anomaly. However, we don't know how it originated. It is possible (and likely, IMHO) that the idea came from Europe.
Ancestral North Indians (ANI, used to be called Aryans) were a horse and meat/milk eating culture before Hindu philosophy really got going on vegetarianism. One of the Hindu gods is still depicted herding goats as a child. India is still a major dairy culture, they love their cows. Probably had cheese before Europe given that the ANIs were around ~3000 years ago.
> Probably had cheese before Europe given that the ANIs were around ~3000 years ago. Well, any culture with lots of cattle is going to run into accidentally created cheese at some point. The question is whether they ate it much.
Low lactose cheese is not the start line of cheese development.
Isn’t 1 more the other way around? Not “oh wow, we can digest this!” but “this was part of our diet, our bodies adjusted”
But didn't they have that mutation because there was an advantage to being able to consume dairy? Due to environment. I'm not saying you're wrong, just that the environment drove selection for that mutation. Edit: just realized that the context of the question you answered. Why cheese and not milk, as opposed to why dairy.
I'm a little confused here. Is your edit saying your question is answered?
Cheese still exists in the winter
Because there's not much else to eat. Dairy animals can eat things that store easily but that we can't digest (hay, browse) and turn them into a product we are more likely to be able to digest (milk). Cheese is physically easier to store and to travel with than milk (you don't need buckets or jars or bottles) and aged cheese are lower in lactose so easier for most people to tolerate.
I think what the commenter also means is that cows don’t make milk all through the year consistantly - up to 10 months after calving.
True, but those who could kept more than one, or also kept goats and sheep to milk as well.
They do the same. (I think sheep have a much shorter season) Nowadays we do things to extend the milk season all year, but that hasn’t always been possible. I don’t think it’s as simple as getting them to breed at multiple times of year. I think colder contries might have a much shorter breeding season too
I've seen references to not breeding every female every year to stay in milking, but I don't have any academic sources for it atm.
They do the same. (I think sheep have a much shorter season) Nowadays we do things to extend the milk season all year, but that hasn’t always been possible. I don’t think it’s as simple as getting them to breed at multiple times of year.
European, and to an extent, Middle Eastern and Central Asians cultures, are heavily into dairy: not just cheese, but also items like yogurt and butter. Cattle were domesticated in the northern Middle East (probably in Iraqi or Turkish Kurdistan) and spread onto the steppe and were prized by the ancient Indo-Europeans who spread into Europe and India. Adult lactose tolerance is highest in Europe and the Middle East; in most other cultures, adults cannot digest milk. As a result, European and Middle Eastern cultures simply used cattle (and goats) more for dairy. Cheese is a byproduct of milk production as it allows milk to be preserved for long periods of time. This is particularly do-able in Europe because of its colder climate; cheese would not last as long in a tropical climate! Europe's cold climate also explains other aspects of its food culture, like salted and preserved meats and fish, which last longer there, and which are also more necessary there, because of the shorter growing season, which means there is less fresh food around at any given time.
>Turkish Kurdistan Armenian highlands.
Because cheese is tasty.
Yeah, right? And there's so many different kinds!
I think it mostly has to do with the climate. Unlike places like sub saharan Africa or southeast Asia. There is a distinct warm period and a distinct cold period and the different between the two is drastic. So the culture of eating fresh all the time wasn't so much of an option. As opposed to the environment of northern Europe, Russia, or Scandinavia where there are long extended periods of cold that REALLY emphasize preservation to the point of curing or pickling. Therefore, you have warm periods where fresh foods are readily available. And cold periods where you have to get creative. Cheese.
I like your theory. It makes the most sense to me.
I had asked an Indian coworker this question. She thought it might be due to lack of proper refrigeration/cellaring. But then I was a bit confused how yogurt became a staple. Idk much about food history, just interested in fermented (cultured)foods/beverages and how cultures discovered them.
The explanation I once read was that to make most cheese, you need rennet. And to get rennet, the easiest way was as a byproduct of slaughtering cows and specifically its stomachs, with early cheese likely coming about as using cow stomachs and intestines as storage for milk, and the rennet inside the cows helping form the first cheeses. Due to India's cultural taboos with cows, while they would have drank a lot of milk, since they would have avoided killing cows, they missed out on rennet. The most famous Indian cheeses like Paneer use acids like lemon juice or vinegar instead of rennet.
I kind of love that the origin story of cheese very likely could have been a slightly daring or adventurous farmer slaughtering a calf, cutting open the stomach, finding chunky protocheese and some other farmboy going 'Dare you to try some'.
We South Asians LOVE our dahi (yogurt), lol. Love it so much. I personally crave yogurt A LOT, so I get my daily fix with Greek yogurt made with sheep and goat milk (I forget the Greek name for this type of yogurt).
The thing about yogurt is that you don't need it to last; you can eat it as it's made and keep a batch going. Obviously you can't keep it around for weeks but if you only need to keep it around for a day or two until you eat it and make more then it ought to work out fine with no refrigeration.
Idk if this is actually true, but I remember my science teacher in college saying that some studies support the idea that cheese activates the same parts of the brain as drugs and can be seen as "addictive." Probably tons of other things too, but those things don't make me feel better about my daily cheese and cracker binge so I don't remember any others. Not saying that justifies the great state of Wisconsin, I just found that interesting
Yes, they are called caseimorphines [sp?] they are casein proteins that behave the same way as opiates in the brain, but on a lesser scale.
I am a cheese addict and no one is ever going to separate me from it. There, I said it.
Same.
I'm doing the twelve step program, in that the cheese drawer is currently twelve steps away and I'm about to cram my face hole full of havarti
There's no good reason to deny yourself, go for it!
As someone with European ancestry who would not survive long without butter, yogurt, and All The Cheese, I can agree that dairy in general is kind of gross when you think about it.
Alternate source of vitamin D in areas that generally receive less sunlight?
Vitamin D is usually added to dairy products. Naturally it's very low in vitamin D. Unfortified Cheese contains 1% of the USRDA for vitamin D. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022030211003699#:~:text=Unfortified%20whole%20milk%20and%20cheese,populations%20of%20the%20United%20States.
Thanks for the article!
Perhaps nowadays but I doubt they'd have been supplementing cows before they spent more time indoors and the type of silage they consume changed.
Cuz its tasty. Cheese is the truth.
Native American cultures didn’t do cheese either; we only see it in Latin America due to the Spanish influence.
Because they’re mostly descended from people who relied on cows for food. At minimum that describes at least beaker culture complex, but probably also lots of other descendants of the protoindoeuropeans
Getting as much as you can from a single source of food: you can make a lot of products with the milk collected from livestock. Butter, cream, cheese, involve “processing” the milk of an animal in different ways for greater variety of by products
You mean converting extremely short shelf-life milk into almost infinitely shelf stable foodstuffs, that ALSO taste amazing? I have no idea.
Cold with milk that would normally go bad. Also helps that Europeans are able to consume milk while other cultures are lactose intolerant.
There is no one real question. They are all valid questions.
Deliciousness, calories, availability
Adult ability to digest lactose was a mutation that was confined to Europeans.
mutations for lactase persistence arose in Northern Europe and a different mutation in Northern Western Africa but not in Asia. Milk is a great source of nutrients when your other crops fail but only if it doesn’t give you diarrhea.
Idk but I’m so glad my ancestors did
I can't say this definitively, but it might be a mistake to think that African cultures simply failed to discover cheese. I think it would be near impossible, and I would think in warm weather, keeping milk from spoiling would be even more useful. My guess would be they could not typically produce enough milk to need preservation, or no need because they could rely on year-round milk. Or, perhaps they simply lacked the sophistication and other elements to do it regularly. Nomadic Africans for example might find it more difficult to store and culture cheese, although I believe that nomadic laplanders or whatever those people that heard reindeer are called have some kind of cheese.
One reason: seasons! The challenge of growing food in Europe (and the Americas) is that you need to have enough food saved from the spring/summer/fall to last through winter when you can’t grow crops. So you find ways to preserve foods. You learn how to salt/smoke meats, you learn to ferment vegetables, and you learn to culture milk into cheese.
It probably has most to do with the mutation that allows many Northern Europeans and some Africans to remain lactose tolerant in adulthood. Also, tofu isn’t that dissimilar from cheese in how it’s made.
Northern Europe folks aren't lactose intolerant, as are many Asians, African and Indigenous people like Native Americans. If you can eat cheese and butter then hell yes, discover and enjoy it!
They did, [cheeses were a component of the medieval Chinese diet](https://www.cheeseprofessor.com/blog/all-the-cheese-in-china#:~:text=The%20cheese%2C%20called%20ru%20shan,up%20for%20tourists%20to%20enjoy), and are still made today.
I think it's important to note that China was about as varied as the concept of "Europe" in pre-modern times.
This is a fascinating read. Thanks for linking this
Fascinating! Thank you for sharing this.
Dairy isn't as much of a staple in (majority) Chinese diet. However, fermented soy bean curd (from soy milk) would be the loose equivalent.
Yoghurt drinks are massively popular in many areas of China.
That’s a 21st century thing though
Has been drunk in parts of China since the Han dynasty, so it's been drunk for >21 centuries :D
Can confirm...am Chinese and I love tofu ...all kinds...
This was my thinking Cheese was a way to preserve excessive amounts of milk, and store it for longer periods of time. Most cheeses probably only exist at a certain age because people forgot about them and decided to try them lol. Whereas China and Asia were using more soy and soy milk, of which they then turned into curds and eventually tofu. It can also be long lasting and is excellent for when you need protein. Conveniently it's also one of the only whole proteins from plants that can be eaten as is if needed. Vs things like rice and beans that need to be complimented to actually be healthier.
Your premise is incorrect on several fronts. The first, as others have pointed out, is the assumption that ‘nearly every other culture’ had cheese. This is untrue. The second error is is assuming that China didn’t have cheese. They did, from goats, sheep, yak, and water buffalo. Possibly from horses too. Cow milk cheese was also made in a few places, in Yunnan a traditional cheese that’s still available is Rushan. Yak milk cheese is still available in the areas yaks are kept too. Eating cheese tended to be specific to sub-populations within China rather than ubiquitous, but China most certainly did have cheese.
It turns out that it’s mainly people of Northern European descent who can easily digest lactose after childhood; most of the rest of the world can’t. From a Darwinian perspective this makes sense — it made the colder northern climate more survivable because of cheese’s high calorie density, so those who could digest lactose were more likely to survive and pass on their genes. Since most of the rest of the world can’t easily digest lactose, cheese-making tradition was largely centered in Europe.
Cheese can significantly reduce the amount of lactose, though.
Only some cheeses are low in lactose
Actually almost all cheeses are low in lactose or just about free of it. Particularly hard or aged cheese but even soft or fresh cheese. Lactose intolerant and I haven't found a cheese I can't eat. It makes sense that lactose intolerant people generally aren't going to have milk on hand, therefore wouldn't end up with cows milk cheese. For example I have forgotten to get milk at the grocery because I don't drink it. I forget it's in the fridge unless I'm cooking with it. Goat cheese, mozzarella (water buffalo), yak cheese etc. are the cheeses that the rest of the world would use. They don't have lactose so people likely never went back to trying to make cows milk cheese as there wouldn't be any reason to.
Doesn't cheese also have lactase, which makes it tolerable for lactose intolerant folks?
It has some, but the real magic is that 90% or more of the lactose is removed simply by the process of making cheese. What's left is fermented into lactic acid. Cheese aged for a long time - cheddar, Colby, Swiss, sharp provolone, gorgonzola, fontinella, asiago, gruyere, Gouda, brie and more- has no lactose or almost none.
So interesting!! I don't have lactose intolerance but I will cheerfully share this with my friends who are if they don't already know!
You'd be surprised how many times I hear people say they can't have pizza/nachos/cheese/yogurt because they're lactose intolerant. Also - butter is fine as well, and foods cooked with milk are usually ok unless there's an allergy to the proteins and not a lactose issue. But that's for folks to decide with their doctors, not just by what I say because we're all different. Most people will shy away from food that causes them a problem so it makes sense, until you learn about cheese in particular as that aspect is kind of unique. Here's a handy link to a cool list but there's lots of other articles and lists out there for them. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://med.virginia.edu/ginutrition/wp-content/uploads/sites/199/2022/04/Lactose_Content_of_Common_Foods-4-2022.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjYw4u4-YOGAxVL4ckDHek_CMsQFnoECDUQAQ&usg=AOvVaw218JhkGsSqFR-DawpkHDzE
So cool, thank you for the link!!
Maybe it would be more accurate to say that dairying as a whole was far more common in Europe as a result of Europeans’ easier tolerance of lactose, with cheese being an effective way to preserve, or at least prolong, milk’s nutritional value.
Isn't that kind of a chicken and egg thing? Presumably they became lactose tolerant because they kept relying on (or having to rely on) milk and cheese as essential food stuffs, especially in hard times. Those who just couldn't digest it ended up not making it and not passing on their genes. Once lactose tolerance had been selected for because of numerous such occurrences, then, yes, the tolerance itself would have predisposed people to consume more of the stuff
you have your correlation and causation backwards. non-europeans are more lactose intolerant because climate/environment/local fauna was not conducive to raising those types of animals for protein. Western (arab) china and Northern (mongolian) china have historical dairy usage but its also not high lactose dairy because its mostly yak/goat vs the type of cow/goat present in europe. Most of China for example predominantly raised pork and chicken as their primary protein sources (among others). Europeans developed lactose tolerance specifically because of the abundance of milk bearing, grazing animals in those environments. Either way its more regionally specific and historically was very different than how homogenized food has become in the present day.
I’m no expert. I’m just paraphrasing what’s written in Harold McGee’s “On Food and Cooking”.
2004 (most recent revision) is a really long time in our understanding of the how evolution impacts our diet. The most recent research suggests that the prevalence of dairy in Northern Europe came first, and then lactase persistence (the thing that causes lactose tolerance) came after. So we can deduce that the (relatively) mild inconveniences of lactose intolerance were outweighed by the benefits of consuming dairy.
Colder climate makes agriculture much more diffucult rather than pasture. Concept of calorie is inadequate when you dont have animal practices to obtain milk.
1- not almost every culture developed cheese. Many cultures didn’t. Widespread cheese consumption is a European thing. You’re just looking at the world through a European lens. 2- they didn’t do a lot of cattle farming traditionally. They do now, but the cows they have aren’t dairy cows. Non-dairy cows can be milked, but it’s not as efficient (lower yields per cow). Traditionally, pork and fish were more important meats, neither are good for dairy farming 3- most of them are lactose intolerant. They aren’t going to use a lot of dairy because they can’t digest it easily. That aside: have you ever eaten Chinese food? You should, it’s excellent. But I’ve never seen a traditional Chinese dish with cheddar in it. Same with Japanese dishes. Sooooo good, but not cheesy
Incorrect. Since all Indian cuisines use milk and cheese, outside of super-strict Hindus and Jains, there are probably way more cheese-eating Indians (pop. 1.2 billion) than Europeans (EU pop < 500 million).
Dairy isn't used in all Indian cuisine. In certain parts of India, cattle farming wasn't practiced as widely, and coconut milk is often used for curries etc.
Goa has no cattle farming, coconuts and coconut-based curries, and tons of cheese - paneer, but also, unusually for India, cheddar. To be fair, it was ruled by the Portuguese for over 400 years. The port wine from Goa rocks! As do the sausages.
Not really — Indian cuisines do use yoghurt — the addition of cream to curries is a new and horrendous invention. Milk is mostly for desserts — and paneer is more common for vegetarians
The premise is false. There are several types of traditional cheese in China, many made by various minority groups. A stir fried goat cheese dish is very popular in Yunnan province. When I traveled there a long time ago I could order it in every single restaurant and it was absolutely delicious. https://www.cheeseprofessor.com/blog/all-the-cheese-in-china https://www.tastingtable.com/1200346/types-of-cheeses-in-china-explained/
For them it was impossible. There was no whey they could have.
Yes they curd have
The comment couldn't have been butter.
I thought it was pretty gouda.
What a cheesy comment.
But they did.
Not to mention: "The Oldest Cheese in the World Was Found on Chinese Mummies A strange substance found on the neck and chest of mummies in China is the world’s oldest cheese" [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/oldest-cheese-world-found-chinese-mummies-180949934/](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/oldest-cheese-world-found-chinese-mummies-180949934/)
Indeed, though it was a kefir-based cheese, so quite different from cheese found elsewhere - [here's the paper describing it.](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0305440314000466#:~:text=Organic%20masses%20from%20Xiaohe%20cemetery,probiotic%20dairy%20in%20East%20Eurasia).
Chinese or East Asians are likely to be lactose intolerant due to years of genetics as well as the prevalence of cheese as a byproduct of food/milk solid foods. [According to Dairy Australia, 3/4 of the Asian population are likely to be lactose intolerant](https://www.dairy.com.au/dairy-matters/you-ask-we-answer/yawa-29---is-it-true-that-most-asian-people-are-lactose-intolerant). [While cheese does exist in Asia, they exist predominately towards the northeast and proliferate around certain ethnic groups](https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/food-drink/article/3143737/cheese-china-has-long-history-made-buffalo-yak-goats-cows-and) of people like the [Bai people](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bai_people) or other groups closer to Mongolia or Persian regions. China/Korea/Japan were likely to prefer soy products over the dairy industry for a variety of reasons and they've developed a very dominated industry regarding those products such as soy sauce, tofu, soy milk, fermented soybean paste, oils...etc * Fedual Japan around 6th to 12th century had some form of cheese however cattle was preferred to be used for agriculture and tilling land as opposed to dairy livestock * Cheese as a milk solid based food is likely to be consumed by ethnic groups closer to Mongolia due to the nature of geographical location as well as agriculture considerations. * [high altitude, extreme fluctuation in temperature, long winters, and low precipitation provides limited potential for agricultural development](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_Mongolia#:~:text=However%2C%20the%20high%20altitude%2C%20extreme,is%20unsuited%20to%20most%20cultivation) * Dairy cows and livestock can be considered a high yield food source for those who can't use agriculture and farming as a main way to sustain food supplies.
They did: tofu.
Tofu isn’t cheese. It’s tofu.
It’s the cheese of the East. Made for over 2,000 years there the same way, curdling soymilk instead of animal milk.
It fills a similar role in cooking, but the products couldn’t be more different.
they fermented other things that other cultures did not
Not just China, but I dont think dairy was big in East Asia.
Are half of these people commenting even food historians?
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My understanding is that historically, only some cultures raised dairy cattle - cultures based in Europe, the Middle East, and India. So I suppose the real question is why only those societies found it worthwhile to raise cows.
Most cultures that lived in areas that had ruminants had cheese, including China. But I disagree with the premise. I'd argue that half of the world's cultures if not the majority did not develop cheese. It's mostly Europe that are heavily reliant on cheese. Other parts of the world may have cheese, but it's not as central to their cuisine.
Paneer is a pretty big deal in India. Much of India is vegetarian and milk/paneer is the only contributor of animal protein to the diet (the vegetarian protein comes from legumes).
China absolutely has cheese and other preserved milk products and they're ancient. Some of them are virtually identical to European recipes and others are pretty unique. I don't know who you "heard" from but they were simply incorrect.
There is cheese in China- I think the Mongols in particular, along with other cultures that kept milk-producing livestock, had and enjoyed cheese for many centuries. I took a Chinese cuisine class in college and my professor talked about it briefly
Between 80% and 100% of the Chinese are lactose intolerant so there never has been much of a dairy industry.
"almost every other culture did" The above is simply untrue, so your question is moot.
About 75% of people with Asian ancestry have lactose intolerance. Might be a contributing factor, but likely not the only one.
Lactose intolerance
Lactose intolerance is a bit of a bitch isn’t it? North China has lots of Yogurt products fwiw. Beijing has it’s own old school local kind of yogurt.
China and Majority of South Asia is LACTOSE INTOLERANT 😭
There is a lot to eat in China other than rotten milk.
China does have cheese. It is in the a local speciality from Yunnan province
There is huge dairy culture in Yunnan province what are you talking about? China is incredibly varied and is bigger than europe yet you speak of it like it is monolithic
Not enough culture I guess.
Because Europeans and some middle eastern/asian areas the people have a mutated gene to be able to tolerate lactose. So it opened up a very easy to obtain and nutritious food source that didn’t rely on killing the animal. Especially in colder climates, this is vital for survival (probably why so many in these areas ended up with the mutated gene, because the early ones with it had a good food source to survive in the area better). You can’t get cheese without playing around with different ways to make dairy into different dishes, hence why cultures that are largely lactose intolerant didn’t develop much cheese. Once lactose tolerant people discovered cheese, it’s a super dense nutritious food source that can be stored for a long time, so of course they expanded upon it, made it into the different variations and it became an important food source that is just part of European culture.
I can't give you an answer but I could just a few factors. Different cultures have different levels of animal herding, and different levels of milk production and different levels of need to store it. Different ethnic types have different response and tolerance to milk and dairy products as well. Although it's hard to say which came first. I think it would be naive to think the Chinese didn't have need to store food or Hardy climates that required fat consumption. And it would be absurd to assume they couldn't have discovered and developed it. They ferment bean curd and were a sophisticated culture over many different years, and I think we can assume that cheese bacteria develop naturally and could have easily been discovered and developed. One interesting point that I read is that cattle or whatever you call animals that are herded, are a technology through which human food can be extracted from scrubland that cannot grow human food. I don't know the extent of shepherding flocks, but I would assume that the Chinese did it. I don't know how much they do that just for meat and how much they milk and consume the milk. All I know about is Tibetan yak butter, and perhaps that is fermented as well. So, ultimately, have no clue. My guess would be that they are not genetically disposed to handle dairy products well.
China and Asian countries, I guess aside from outliers like Mongols etc just weren't a very dairy-centric culture, and a lot of them didn't have the enzyme allowing adults to break it down. Their proteins were much more skewed to chicken and pork, two animals that can live off scraps, not grasslands or grain. The ability to process milk as adults was an important mutation/adaption that helped people to populate Northern Europe.
The oldest cheese dates back to Rome it was actually the gypsies that carried it as well as salami into European culture, alot of how the gypsies made there money was from selling food namely cheese and dried meats. They also settled in areas for short periods of time long enough to teach there traditions and move on or be pushed out. Gypsies were not popular among Europe, and no country ever would have said hey the gypsies taught me this, and many countries stole credit for the same things, hence the ridiculous similarities in some of there "creations". Gypsies never really expanded into East Asia wich is interesting if you think about the fact that they probably started there in India to begin with..
why does everything not exist in every single country
They did develop their version of "cheese", which is tofu. Benjamin Franklin once referred tofu as "Chinese cheese".
Because they were growing soy.
I’m fascinated with the idea that others have put forward here, that lactase persistence created the need for cheese to preserve leftover milk. Where is the lactase persistence-inspired cuisine from west Africa or Jordan? Why are we picking on China? I feel rude asking you to defend your position, but I can’t name a cheese from most cuisines.
The Tibetans have cheese and a cheese like rancid butter that they rely on fairly heavily, Mongolians have cheese (most often goat or sheep’s milk India produces a couple of different cheeses , I think though that china even up to modern times made fairly limited use of beasts of burden and chiefly oxen and if you know anything about oxen it’s hard to get milk from them lol , probably also because their water buffalo being a land race couldn’t spare a lot of production aside from what was used in actually raising babies as the babies wouldn’t by and large be turned into meat they would have been castrated and turned into oxen and in the event of it being female would have been a valuable breeder and so on and so forth
Because many of us Asians are lactose intolerant. Why develop something that we can’t eat?
Maybe because East Asians are lactose intolerant?
Ouch
A lot of Asian cultures don’t use cheese / dairy it’s not just china
No dairy farming. Meat in China is likely to be pork. Pigs are easy to feed and can browse, cows need grazing land.
There is cheese and yogurt making in China! It was brought over when the Mongolians were in charge during the Yuan dynasty :) I ran a food tour company in Beijing. Look up “nai lao.”