I studied up on Navajo food a while back. Turns out that they're mostly lactose intolerant - dairy was never a big part of their diet. When they got stuck on the res and had foods from traditional European diets thrust upon them, a lot of them started experiencing symptoms of malnutrition. They figured out cheese and dairy didn't agree with them, so didn't eat it. But a lot of their traditional foods were unobtainable for a while. Well it turns out they got most of their calcium through the addition of ash to their cornmeal - simple cornmeal mush was a staple of their diet. I think they figured this out in the 1970s, so it took a hundred years to sort that shit out.
I studied up on Navajo food a while back. Turns out that they're mostly lactose intolerant - dairy was never a big part of their diet. When they got stuck on the res and had foods from traditional European diets thrust upon them, a lot of them started experiencing symptoms of malnutrition. They figured out cheese and dairy didn't agree with them, so didn't eat it. But a lot of their traditional foods were unobtainable for a while. Well it turns out they got most of their calcium through the addition of ash to their cornmeal - simple cornmeal mush was a staple of their diet. I think they figured this out in the 1970s, so it took a hundred years to sort that shit out.
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