# Lactose intolerance, pizza, and Attila the Hun



## Jabrosky (Oct 22, 2014)

This was a concept that pinged up in my mind after looking up the history of pizza and Attila the Hun.

Most accounts of Attila's life claim that he died at a wedding feast, either due to a severe nosebleed that choked him or to internal bleeding after over-drinking. However, some historians have recently cast doubt on this:


> Based on detailed philological analysis, Babcock concludes that the account of natural death, given by Priscus, was an ecclesiastical "cover story" and that Emperor Marcian (who ruled the Eastern Roman Empire from 450 to 457) was the political force behind Attila's death.


On the same day, I also learned that pizza, my favorite dish of Italian origin, had a Roman-era precursor in the form of _panis focacius_, a flatbread on which they would put toppings. Combining these two facts produced the following what-if question:

*What if Emperor Marcian used pizza to poison Attila the Hun?*

The only thing Marcian would have needed on that pizza to hurt Attila would be cheese. Since cheese is a milk product, the lactose in it might not have squared well with the great Asian warlord's digestive system. He might get very sick at best, making him weak and vulnerable to an assassin's blade.

So I have a couple of questions:

1) Could the cheese in pizza trigger sickness for lactose-intolerant people?

2) I don't think lactose sickness is usually deadly, but could it make someone weak enough to kill with greater ease?

*EDIT:* Hope this doesn't offend any Asian people in this forum...


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## Trick (Oct 22, 2014)

Is it more common for Asian people to be lactose intolerant?

My first thought was "No way, impossible." And then I stopped. Thought. And realized I really know nothing about lactose intolerance. My brother is afflicted by it, mildly compared to some I think but I know very little on this topic. That's not helpful at all, sorry.


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## Steerpike (Oct 22, 2014)

I don't think it is going to offend anyone. It is a fact that lactose intolerance has a greater prevalence among people of Native American and Asian descent than some other ethnicities.

I don't know how easy it would be to use this as a prelude to an assassination. From my knowledge of it, you might end up with some pretty bad cramping if you have a serious reaction to the lactose, but I'm not sure the symptoms are enough to incapacitate someone or make them easier to kill. At best, it seems speculative, and if you had enough trust from Attila that he'd take food from you, it seems like it would be more reliable to just poison it in some more deadly way.


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## Jabrosky (Oct 22, 2014)

Trick said:


> Is it more common for Asian people to be lactose intolerant?


Yes it is.






But right now I feel really guilty about the whole premise because it could easily be interpreted as mocking Asian people's biology. I admit I like getting a rise out of people from time to time, but I don't want to perpetuate racism.


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## Steerpike (Oct 22, 2014)

A biological fact isn't racism, in my view. You're not saying an ethnicity is inferior, you're just working with a known biological fact.


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## Jabrosky (Oct 22, 2014)

Steerpike said:


> A biological fact isn't racism, in my view. You're not saying an ethnicity is inferior, you're just working with a known biological fact.


That was what I was thinking when I first created the thread. I've always understood racism to be fundamentally a value hierarchy rather than a simple acknowledgement of population differences. Observing that Asian people have higher rates of lactose intolerance shouldn't be the same as placing them lower on a scale of worth as human beings because of it.

But you're right, lactose intolerance by itself may not be sufficient to assassinate someone.


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## Steerpike (Oct 22, 2014)

On the other hand, if you're writing something with a humorous angle to it, it may very well work.


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## Legendary Sidekick (Oct 22, 2014)

Yeah, I can honestly say I don't feel like this is an insult to my wife and (half-Chinese) daughters. I appreciate your consideration, but I'd like to think no one would be offended.

For someone with a severe allergy to milk, leaning on a table that had Cheeto crumbs wiped from it with a wet towel can be deadly.

A neighbor of mine almost died this way. She was rushed to the hospital six times during the school year, until the parents finally realized the school was doing as much as possible to protect her, but she really could not survive in that building! (Her allergies were far less severe before she turned 13.) The city paid a tutor to come to her house. No way she'd have eaten pizza in her teens and lived to tell the tale.

I don't know that pizza would be harmful to 92% of China, however, or even 2%. Hong Kong has some great pizza places that lay the cheese on real thick. And we could actually order a "Louisana pizza" that included potato as a topping. (I miss that place.) The Chinese drink a lot less milk than Americans, so I suppose lactose intolerance is high due to lack of exposure. Likely, Attila the Hun would have sat on the throne for a while after eating a pizza. I'm not sure he'd have cared for the taste. There were some Chinese people I knew (mostly older) who couldn't stand western food. It took a while for my mother-in-law to be able to drink a glass of milk. She often asks me for half a glass, and on Monday, my six-year-old was having a tummy ache. She blamed milk! (As opposed to the flu that's going around in these parts.)


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## Steerpike (Oct 22, 2014)

@Legendary

Milk allergy is another story altogether. That's an immune response, and I suspect you're right that it could potentially be quite dangerous. A severe allergic response can send you into anaphylactic shock.

Lactose intolerance is merely an insufficiency of the lactase enzyme that breaks down lactose in the gut, and not an immune reaction. It's much less severe than the allergy.


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## Jabrosky (Oct 22, 2014)

Steerpike said:


> On the other hand, if you're writing something with a humorous angle to it, it may very well work.


It was indeed meant to be humorous, but would it be so funny if it required an extreme exaggeration of lactose intolerance's effects? Furthermore, the punchline would basically go, "Asians can't digest lactose, so a pizza would have killed Attila", which does sound to me like it's mocking Asian biology. Hence the racism consideration.


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## Legendary Sidekick (Oct 22, 2014)

Jabrosky said:


> It was indeed meant to be humorous, but would it be so funny if it required an extreme exaggeration of lactose intolerance's effects? Furthermore, the punchline would basically go, "Asians can't digest lactose, so a pizza would have killed Attila", which does sound to me like it's mocking Asian biology. Hence the racism consideration.


When I lived in Hong Kong, some coworkers didn't think Chinese medicine would work on me since I'm not Chinese.

I wasn't offended so much as I found the idea silly, as if I were a monkey or a cat. (So maybe the Chinese meds don't work on Steerpike.)

I was under the impression that lactose intolerance being common in Asia had to do with the typical milk-free Asian diet.



> Normally, your body produces large amounts of lactase at birth and during early childhood, when milk is the primary source of nutrition. Usually your lactase production decreases as your diet becomes more varied and less reliant on milk. This gradual decline may lead to symptoms of lactose intolerance.



According to the article I found (and quoted and linked), that seems to be the case. So, it's not really making fun of Asian biology since it's not purely biological. (Yeah, you can be born with it, but having lived in Asia I believe the reason I quoted is much more likely to affect 92% of a population that doesn't typically drink milk.)

So I guess you run two risks here:
1. The one you're worried about, which is basically giving a reader (at least an Asain one?) the same feeling I had when told Chinese meds wouldn't affect me because of my race.
2. The humor is killed by the fact you exaggerate the effects of lactose intolerance, which is not nearly as deadly as the worst allergy I ever heard of.

Oh, by the way, it turns out my neighbor went public with her allergy if you want to read her thoughts on her own life-threatening experience. The article says "Tree Nut Allergy" though milk was also on her list of deadly foods.


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## Penpilot (Oct 23, 2014)

I'm Chinese with lactose intolerance and I'm not offended in the least. They say that 75% of the world is lactose intolerant, with variations from race to race. Here's an article. Most Human Beings Are Lactose Intolerant: HereÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s Why | Collective-Evolution

For me, the severity of the symptoms can vary depending on if I have a full stomach or not and from food to food. For the most part, I just get gassy and have to sit on the throne and rule over my kingdom for a while longer than the norm. Funny thing is I love pizza and it just happens that pizza doesn't affect me, or at least it's not noticeable.

If you're going for humor on this, there's nothing like a good fart joke.


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## Jabrosky (Oct 23, 2014)

I've decided to go ahead with this story and am already 1,500 words into it as of now. Wish me luck!


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## Queshire (Oct 25, 2014)

Was Attila the Hun lactose intolerant?


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## Steerpike (Oct 25, 2014)

Queshire said:


> Was Attila the Hun lactose intolerant?




Odds are in favor of it.


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## Jabrosky (Oct 25, 2014)

Queshire said:


> Was Attila the Hun lactose intolerant?


I don't think anyone has cared to document that, but his Hunnic people did ultimately come from the steppes of northeastern Asia, so I figured they might have suffered from it like other Asians.

Upon researching what beverages Asian steppe nomads might have consumed, however, I learned that dairy products actually do feature heavily in Mongolian cuisine. For instance, the national beverage in Mongolia is _airag_, or fermented mare's milk. I guess Mongolians, as a herding people, have an easier time consuming milk than their Chinese brethren.

Needless to say, that ended up throwing a major monkey wrench into my premise.

*EDIT:* Looked at the _airag_ page again. It mentions the fermentation process destroys the lactose in milk, which must explain why Mongolians are able to consume it.


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## Ankari (Oct 25, 2014)

Fermented Mare's Milk (Kumis) is virtually lactose free. The fermenting process converts lactose into lactic acid, ethenol and carbon dioxide.


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## Gurkhal (Oct 25, 2014)

I don't know why but the moment I saw this thread I knew it was started by Jabrosky. 

Anyway, I think that it would be a rather funny but ignoble death for a great warlord to die the "Death by Pizza", most other people who dies that particular death do not have nearly his merits on their CV.


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## K.S. Crooks (Oct 25, 2014)

Lactose intolerance usually causes stomach cramps, which certainly could be strong enough to make it difficult for a person to defend themselves in mortal combat. If Attila was lactose intolerant he may have other allergies. Do not worry about offending anyone, especially for talking about biological tendencies among groups of people. Also consider that humans are the only species to drink milk past infancy and the only species that regularly drinks the milk from other species (cattle, goats, sheep, yak, reindeer, caribou, etc).


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