Why is there no cheese in Asian food?

Question

I have noticed that there seems to be no cheese in asian food, nor many dairy-related products. Why is that?

Answer 1

If you have the opportunity to read Marvin Harris "Good To Eat" he goes into great detail why dairy products do not play an important role in Asian cultures.

Answer 2

This is why people, in general, are healthier.. you barely see people with obesity.

Answer 3

A lot of asians are lactose intolerant.

Answer 4

Why don't Americans use soy sauce, oyster sauce or Hoi San sauce in their cooking????

Answer 5

Because milk is for babies. You don't see adult animals natrually drink milk do you?

We get our calcium from vegetables. This is because they have more calcium. It's true.

This also explains why Asians are the skinniest race. I'm Asian and none of my family members are obese. We don't look like overgrown babies.

I hope this answers your question.

Answer 6

Of course there is cheese in asian food, they juz call it in different names not cheese.

eg for indians we call it paneer, which is cottage cheese.

Answer 7

cuz ppl there don't eat much cheese they eat mainly vegetables and dairy products excluding cheese

Answer 8

Because that would make it Italian.

Answer 9

The climate and lay of the land is not condusive to making any kind of dairy products on a large scale.

It would not be cost effective to try and raise dairy cows in the middle of a hot and humid jungle.

They do not have any kind of flat grazing lands like here in the U.S. in the Mid West etc.

Their diet is mostly vegetables, chicken, pork and sea food for so long (thousands of years) that they have not bothered to "westernize" and start using cheese.

Cheese would not go well with hot chiles, fish sauce, cucumers, and other ingrediants in Asian cuisine.

Answer 10

am pretty sure that cows were not used for milk production for cheese until fairly recently. I don't have a source, but that is the best answer i can give you perhaps you can search for milk production in Asia and find out when they really started using cheese. I just recall learning that Asia did not use cows for cheese production because they always had major problems with overgrazing and things like that in asia.

Answer 11

they didn't have dairy animals, many are lactose intolerant.  They don't eat much beef.  much more chicken, pork and seafood...never tried to milk a pig lol.  Large milk bearing animals are much more valuable as a beast of burden than a food source.

Answer 12

Cheese is rarely found in East Asian dishes, as genetic traits impeding the digestion of dairy products are relatively common in that part of the world and hence such products are rare. However, East Asian sentiment against cheese is not universal; cheese made from yaks' (chhurpi) or mares' milk is common on the Asian steppes; the national dish of Bhutan, ema datsi, is made from homemade cheese and hot peppers and Yunnan cheese is produced by several ethnic minority groups in the Yunnan province of China by mixing water buffalo milk and rice vinegar. Cheese consumption is increasing in China, with annual sales more than doubling from 1996 to 2003 (to a still small 30 million U.S. dollars a year).[37] Certain kinds of Chinese preserved bean curd are sometimes misleadingly referred to in English as "Chinese cheese," because of their texture and strong flavor.

Another reason could be lactose intolerance, which is environmentally induced when weaning a child in non dairy consuming societies (such as asia and africa)

Answer 13

that's a good question, I never even noticed before reading this question, maybe one day I will ask at an asian restaurant

Answer 14

they hadn't developed a way to make cheese like European countries did and they were fairly healthy until recently.  Now they eat dairy products more they are getting so fat and cancer is abundant.  Blame it on dairy.

Answer 15

The animals raised by Asian farmers are mostly work animals: water buffalo to plow and harrow the fields and pull the cart loaded with people and farm produce. And they have goats, duck, chicken and hogs for meat and eggs.

Asians are born genetically adverse to lactose. There are milk-giving animals in Asia, but they are raised for purposes other than milk.

That is changing with the new generation, who are now getting their body chemistry acclimatized to US-franchise fastfood spaghetti and pizza.