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Health

Calorie boost may explain why adults evolved ability to digest milk

Why some people evolved the ability to digest milk in adulthood hasn't been clear, but the extra calories that young children got may have been key

By Michael Le Page

6 May 2023

Milk can provide a large proportion of the calories needed by children

Johnny Greig/Getty Images

Young children who retain the ability to digest milk benefit from a big increase in available calories, and this may explain why mutations that allow this spread rapidly in some human populations several thousand years ago.

These extra calories would greatly increase children’s chances of surviving infections, as undernourished children are more likely to die if they become seriously ill, says Alexandre Fabre, a paediatrician at the Timone Infant Hospital in Marseille, France, who led the study.

Milk is …

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