Lisa Marasco writes,
"In the U.S., we inter-marry between many races; among those races there
may be specific intolerances such as milk in the hispanic population.
Different indigenous groups have different staples, and what one tolerates
well another does not.  ... I strongly suspect that babies who are of a single
race and whose moms are eating the native diet do not experience all the
colic and food intolerance issues that we are seeing."
I have some reservations about this.
First, my husband and I are from very, very similar, homogeneous,
north-western Europe/British Isles backgrounds, for centuries.  We should
have absolutely no genetic predisposition to dairy intolerance, yet our son
became increasingly cow's-milk-allergic starting at the age of 5 (a year
and a half after weaning).  So, for what it's worth, there's one anecdotal
counter-example.  (Our daughter started out with what may have been slow
gut closure: dairy products messed up her bowels as a toddler, but she
seems to have outgrown the problem.)
Second, I think we are apt to overestimate the homogeneity of other times
and countries by comparison with our own.  Is the U.S. really that racially
varied compared to, say, the Mediterranean basin over the last few
millennia?  My non-lactation research interests involve 8th-14th century
cultural contacts in England, which were quite a bit more extensive than we
usually imagine.  Well-established trade and travel routes are mixing pots,
and many are in locations where the various groups involved are genetically
quite diverse.  So though on the whole I'd agree that the U.S. has a
diverse population, I'd argue that this is not unusual worldwide or through
history, and should not in itself be enough to explain major waves of
allergies.
Two more thoughts.  Some groups are prone to develop lactose intolerance in
adulthood, but do they also develop milk protein allergy?  And in fact some
food allergies are *more* common in groups for whom those foods are a
historical staple: I believe only those of Mediterranean background are
prone to a dangerous allergy to fava beans.
I do agree that there is a real mismatch between the variety of the U.S.
population and the virtual mandate in this country to eat cow's milk
products several times a day.  *That* is the part that seems really weird
to me.

Elise
LLLL, IBCLC, and (finally) PhD in linguistics
Bath (Swiftwater) New Hampshire USA

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