colonialist dietary standards

Recently I came across Barbara Kingsolver's clear(er) insight into the way that human dietary tolerances have developed mirroring colonization and continued institutionalized oppression by Europeans. She writes:

The gene for lifelong lactose digestion has an 86 percent frequency among northern Europeans. By contrast, it shows up in only about one-third of southern Europeans, who historically were not big herders. In the Far East, where dairy cattle were unknown, the gene is absent. Even now, Southeast Asians have virtually zero tolerance for lactose. Only about 10 percent of Asian Americans can digest milk as adults, along with fewer than half of American Jews and about a quarter of rural Mexicans. Among Native Americans it's sketchily documented--estimates range from 20 to 40 percent. Among African Americans, adult milk drinking tolerance is high, nearly 50 percent, owing to another interesting piece of human history. The mutation for lactase persistence emerged several times independently, alongside the behavior of adult milk-drinking. It shows up in populations that have little else in common other than cows: the tall, lean Fulani of West Africa; the Khoi pastoralists of southern Africa; and the fair-skinned Northern Europeans.
-Animal, Vegetable, Miracle 138

It's a long quote, thus the important part is bolded.