In a message dated 98-01-12 15:27:53 EST, Janice wrote:

<< I am beginning to believe that humans should
 not consume dairy and am looking forward to hearing other's views on this
 issue.>>

Janice/Lactnet,

I too have begun to have anti-milk sentiment though that is considered
something akin to Communism here in the US.  I find it interesting that the
consumption of milk
as a normal occurrence occurred only after the beginning of agrarian life
style in the human species.  This after so many thousands of generations of
people evolved to expect Stone Age/Gatherer-Hunter experiences, of which milk
(other than breast milk until somewhere around 4 yrs or so) was simply not a
part.  Only after animals began to be domesticated was cow/goat/mare milk
available to humans.  Now opinions vary a little but the fact is that humans
have lived in agrarian way from 100-500 generations.  That way of life
connected the gatherer hunter lifestyle (about 100,000 generations and as much
further back as you feel comfortable calling our ancestors protohuman, and to
the primates if you believe in the principles of evolution) to the industrial
lifestyle we have now (about 10 generations).  Now these last two sets of
experiences (chronologically speaking: industrial and agrarian) have existed
for miniscule blips of time on the big BIG big timeline of human-protohuman
existence, yet in these periods we have attempted and succeeded mostly at
radically fundamentally altering the inputs to the human system.  In every
way--diet, exercise, birth, breastfeeding (re: lack thereof), vaccinations,
etc etc etc.  Now we may decide by risk-benefit analysis that the changes we
have made are positive and okey-dokey but that is hubris on our part--we do
not, cannot, have no slight ability to KNOW the long term effects of these
types of FUNDAMENTAL alterations of the "cosmic recipe" that a million or more
years of evolution has worked out gene by gene, mutation by random mutation,
in a trial and error process that we cannot fathom the complexity of.  Chaos
theory says one cannot know the systemic effect of changing the fundamental
parameters  which have given rise to the present system's conditions.  So why
would we expect people to tolerate dairy in every case after only a few
thousand years having dairy at all?  Simp[ly because it "does a body good?"
As one of my profs says, WHAT DO YOU MEAN and HOW DO YOU KNOW? should be asked
of any declarative statement.

ARRGH.  Until we all begin to question more what the human species expects to
have happen (are you here Kathy Dettwyler?  You are the man, as they say)and
believe less what is sold as good, beautiful, right, and healthy, we will
continue to have these problems.

Anybody make it this far without deleting me?  I needed that.

Joy Berry-Parks
Attachment Parenting Group of AR
LLLL Little Rock
anthropologist in training