Going down a rabbit hole....er, MOUSE hole

     I recently read something that both surprised me and shocked me.   I was not looking for a research project, I wasn't even looking for anything but a distraction.   The problem is this particular distraction combined a few things that I love.   Food, being one of them, and History being the other.   It also contained a mystery; which at first seemed like a shock.  However it really something I had never really thought about before...but after a day of research all the puzzle pieces fell into place and it made sense.

    So what was the mystery?   Exactly.

    Japanese, and to a lesser extent Chinese culture had never really developed a Cheese or Dairy Culture.

   I knew for example that in Tibet and other areas Yak's were used for the production of dairy.  Yak's milk is around 6 to 11% butterfat, meaning that it is perfect for things like yogurt, butter and cheese.  Water buffalo and even cattle were also known to both cultures.

    However "dairy culture" never really developed in China and Japan.   The reasons behind this were cultural, biological and religious.   It's interesting to me that in the rest of the world, some sort of cheese production was starting up and proceeding, yet in the "Middle Kingdoms" of China and Japan it never really got off the ground...all because of how culture, religion and biology intertwined with each other.

    What started me down this mouse hole (I am a City Mouse in the Country after all) was a brief article about a Japanese Cheese called "So".   This particular cheese dates back nearly1500 + years and was eaten in the Imperial courts at the time.  

     According to this recipe here, you are basically just removing the water from the milk, creating a type of condensed milk.   However "So" goes past that stage.  You are continuously stirring (for anywhere from one to five hours) and working the milk into curd form, which is then set into a mold to knit the curds together.   After which you have a sweet cheese.  

    I haven't made this particular cheese, and to be honest, I'm not sure I wish to.  My arm cramped making my Amish Cup Cheese not so long ago, and the continues stirring needed to make "So" did not appeal to me.   

    In both Japan and China, there were cultural reasons why a cheese or dairy culture didn't develop.  "So" required a lot of milk and time, so basically it became it became a "rich person's food."  It required time to stir and basically meant that you could not do another job while preventing the milk from burning.   This differs from European cheeses were rennet could be added or the dairy could sit out for a day to clabber. 

   

    Another possible reason is that cattle, yaks and water buffalo are powerful animals and often yoked to be used in the fields.  While early Chinese and Japanese certainly were familiar with horses a variety of barriers really prevented their development as farming animals like they were used in the west.   

    In China, horses were more numerous in Tibet and other northern regions than they were in China itself.  China was at war with many of it's northern neighbors for much of it's early history.  Therefore the horse became more of a war machine than domestic beast.   China never really developed a good horse for battle however, but that is another mouse hole to go down somewhere in the future.

    Something similar happened in Japan where the Shogunate's of feudal Japan simply made all horses part of the local warlord's personal property.  

    Left with little choice, the population used what we would call Dairy animals for plowing their fields.  They just didn't see them as a potential milk or meat source.   

    Interestingly enough, both the Chinese and Japanese cultures came to view the eating of dairy products as something barbaric.  After all, the Mongols to the north, which often raided China and defeated Chinese Armies, used their yaks to make butter and cheese.  It was a way to demonize the enemy.

    Now that is not to say that cheese didn't develop in China or Japan, it just never developed like it did in the west.  China for example, has some very famous cheese made from cow and goats milk.   

    So that answers the cultural question.   The biological question comes next.  Generally speaking East Asians are lactose intolerant, meaning that they lack the enzyme needed to break down the sugar lactose that is common in dairy.    While it's not lethal, it can be unpleasant.

    Climate plays a rule in this as well.  In places where dairy animals could be raised safety and economically, such as Europe, the gene that causes this intolerance was slowly replaced or disappeared from humans.  In hotter or colder climates, where cattle do not do well, we see in increase in lactose intolerance. 

     This not bode well for us in the future for several reasons, but then again; global warming is for another blog post at another time.

    In other words, the more milk and cheese we consumed over time the less lactose intolerance became an issue. 

    In Asia, the inability to produce the enzyme lactase into adulthood resulted in less of a reliance on dairy product due to cultural reason but also climate reasons.

   

    All the pieces of the puzzle on why East Asia never developed a "Cheese Culture" were slowly coming together.   The final piece of the puzzle was Buddhism.  

    It should be stated that Buddhism does not have a special place for cows in it's myths and religious beliefs.   Although Buddhism has strongly been influenced by the Indian Culture it arose from.   Buddha himself proposed a vegetarian lifestyle.  

    Because Buddhism has reincarnation as one of it's central tenets, one which sees all living things as potential sentient beings.   As such all meat and dairy animals were seen differently then they were in the west. 

    It's also possible that early Asian farmers wanted to "thank" their draft animals for the work they did in the fields and as such earned a special status.   How early society interacted with their animals is certainly another rabbit whole - er, mouse hole - worth your time exploring and is something that I will not be covering here.

    As Buddhism spread through out China and Japan it affected the dairy culture in both of these countries in similar ways.  Dairy just was not a major player from the very beginning.  

    I am of course oversimplifying things, however the intersection of culture, biology and religious belief form the basis of all good food and even trade.    Anthony Bourdain once wrote that "I think food, culture, people and landscape are all absolutely inseparable."

    After spending a little time researching this, I could not agree more.