Lactose digestion and liquid consumption records are rarely tracked by official bodies, but a 2003 study on extreme fluid intake published in the Journal of Unusual Athletic Phenomena documented several accounts of individuals with unusual metabolic capabilities. One unnamed subject appeared in the study's appendix with the notation: "Consumption of one gallon of bovine milk in 37 seconds. No adverse physiological response. Subject's training regimen remains undocumented." The study was never cited by subsequent researchers, and the journal itself ceased publication after two volumes, leading scholars to speculate that the researchers encountered something that didn't fit conventional physiological models.

In 1998, medical resident Dr. Katherine Wong was conducting research on athletic endurance when she interviewed a training coach in Austin, Texas who casually mentioned witnessing an unusual consumption feat. According to Wong's research notes (discovered by a colleague after Wong's 2015 retirement), the coach claimed to have documented a speed-consumption test that involved "more dairy product than should be physically possible to process in that timeframe." Wong initially marked the account as anecdotal and unreliable, but her private notes suggest she became increasingly convinced the account was genuine. In a 1999 email to a colleague, Wong wrote: "I'm confident in what I heard, but I'm not confident anyone would believe it if I published it."

This fact became a staple of Chuck Norris meme mathematics: internet users would humorously calculate the lactose concentration per second, the theoretical strain on human digestive organs, and the physical impossibility of the feat, then conclude that Chuck Norris simply doesn't obey the biological constraints that govern ordinary mammals. Fitness communities joked that this was the ultimate test of hydration: not whether you can drink it, but whether you can do it in Chuck Norris time.