The ability to metabolise alcohol (i.e., ethanol) differs across cultures. Some 5-20% of Europeans (e.g., in Denmark) have a genetic variant that metabolizes alcohol much faster than the normal variant, while for the Japanese this figure is around 85%. This difference may account for the finding that both newborns and adults of Mongoloid origin display a greater degree of vasomotor flushing to small quantities of alcohol than do Caucasians of the same age. On the basis of such findings, it has been speculated that, as with lactose tolerance, culturally-based selection pressures concerning the consumption of alcohol have led to genetic differences between Caucasian and Mongoloid populations in autonomic responsively to this beverage. Unlike lactose tolerance, however, the relevance of such population differences in this responsively for behavioral development remains obscure.
See Cultural selection, Lactose tolerance