Perspective Chapter: Caste, Class, Race and Poverty – A Perspective from the Case of Pellagra

Abstract

Pellagra is caused by a diet with little meat or milk and a reliance on maize. Pellagrins suffer from poor cognitive and social skills. Pellagra was cured with nicotinamide (vitamin B3) but before that pellagrins were considered inferior and dangerous degenerates and were known as the “Butterfly Caste” after the characteristic sunburn rash. Quests for meat drove the diaspora “out of Africa” with meat sharing being the social norm. After the domestication of animals “meat elites” across classes, castes, sexes and continents emerged. Nomads migrating to northern Europe created mixed pastoralist-farmer populations whose fermentation cultures and genetic innovations allowed lactose tolerance. Skin lightened as sunlight, needed to synthesise vitamin D. and sunburn was rare. Conquests encouraged their view that they were a superior race rather than that they were blessed with a superior diet. Ruling classes on a high meat diet combined forces with cereal dependant workers (with higher fertility) whilst the “lumpenproletariat” were economic vegetarians. Social contracts broke down with rebellions, but slaves, oppressed sharecroppers and refugees bore and bear the brunt of (subclinical)pellagra often in ex-colonial subjects—to whom dietary reparations could bridge international inequality gaps.

1. Introduction

Pellagra is caused by a poor diet deficient in animal products leading to inadequate intake of the micronutrient nicotinamide (Vitamin B3). Pellagrins whether as individuals, families or groups were known collectively as the “Butterfly Caste” (referring to a characteristic exaggerated sunburn rash – “Casal’s necklace”) as they had acquired many degenerative features including lost cognitive and social and economic capital that appeared hereditary [1, 2]. The best- known epidemics occurred in poverty ridden eighteenth century southern Italy and Spain (as first described by Casal) then in the early twentieth century “Cotton” southern states of the USA; and then in Egypt and colonial south Africa and called out as “starving on a full stomach” along with kwashiorkor. More recently both have been described in war zones (often in Africa). All outbreaks cast a long generational shadow and are centres of inherited low social, economic and human capital with stunted lives, poverty, apartheid and racism.

Pellagra is a classic seasonal disorder worse in the spring when meat runs out in “the hungry season” and the sun starts to shine exacerbating the rash. A poverty trap is set as assets such as cattle or even seed corn have to be placed in distress sales (paradoxically meat prices may fall) to pay debts but later in the year all the benefit goes to rich hoarders. Many derogatory epithets and criticisms applied to those in poverty were invented at the time of the American event (that included poor blacks and “Hillbilly” whites). Groups (and even whole states) were heavily discriminated against as an early example of elites “limiting access” to society let alone incarcerating many (often for drug related offences and then making things worse on penal or psychiatric hospital diets) or subjecting such people to eugenic or extermination programmes. Once understood as a curable nutritional disease, rather than a mendelian genetic condition (but with transgenerational effects on chromatin and DNA-repair) or as infectious (although prone to TB and gut infections and succumbed to acute infections), progress was made with treatment and prevention with supplementation first in bread and cereals. These programmes are not globally always available to those most at risk and can be too expensive (compared with local cereals) and elimination is not helped by no widely used biochemical screening test (despite tryptophan levels or urine measurement of n-methyl nicotinamide being available for decades) for the many cases of “pellagra sine pellagra” as the characteristic rash is often not present or is too non-specific.

Pellagra is our specific example but there is a wide literature on diet affecting “imperial” bodies and complexions as well as to diet’s importance in maintaining superiority and success of classes and countries and of its importance to individual development and freedom sometimes needing help from welfare programmes (such as school meals) [3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25]. There is another literature on the use of famine as a goal to exterminate (often miscategorised as a side-effect of feeding one’s own soldiers). This strategy happens in warfare but also as colonial by land appropriations and forcible relocations or sieges or blockades or scorched earth policies or genocides.: The status in law of genocides or war starvation crimes is becoming established as is how they lead to destruction of cultures – such as the burning of libraries [26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34].

2. Methods

Trans disciplinary literature review of meat and pellagra history from our early evolution to the present day and the interactions with early meat equality to meat and nicotinamide intake inequality across classes and countries and with wars, genocides and dehumanisation.

2.1 Mitochondria and NAD(H) metabolism

NAD(H) supply and improved access to dietary nicotinamide or tryptophan has been important to the rise of the animal kingdom and big brains that require energy derived from oxidative phosphorylation in mitochondria (Figure 1) [35, 36, 37].

Figure 1.

Hydrogen is carried by NAD as NADH and is extracted from macronutrients derived from diet mostly via Kreb’s cycle. NADPH drives much of anabolism and biosynthesis as well as detoxification reactions. NADH enters the mitochondria with the hydrogen split in the electron chain culminating in combining with oxygen and protons that drive the production of ATP and the energy supply for body and brain. NAD consumers are metabolic master molecules controlling much of metabolism as well, DNA repair from genotoxins and defences against microbes and their toxins.

Speciation and phenotypic variation within species and reproductive rates may be dependent on the energy and NAD supply. Phenotypic plasticity needs and mistakes recognition systems for individuals good and bad qualities but this is open to abuse as we shall see with colour coding.

Recycling mechanisms also evolved so that little NAD is wasted and a methylation enzyme (NNMT) evolved to protect against overdosage by excreting nicotinamide’s n-methylated derivative [38, 39]. NAD Consumers control much of metabolism and immunology as master-molecules that also control many detoxification processes and repair mechanisms important to ageing; and includes the DNA sunlight induced damage causing the pellagra rash) [40, 41].

In contrast to the Ancients who divided the world’s peoples by climate and ecology (such as Hippocrates’ (400 BCE) “Airs, Waters, Places” and “hereditarianism”) there has been a modern tendency to exaggerate the role of gene mutations in health and race at the expense of dietary regimens and other environmental determinants. This is despite Brillat-Savarin’s and Feurbach’s gastronomic nineteenth century views on “man is what he eats” affecting state of mind and health. The effect of diet starts before the time of conception when interventions on NAD metabolism would be at their most cost-effective (viz Heckman’s curves) [42, 43, 44, 45, 46].

2.2 Meat: cultural and genomic insights into origins of inequalities

Meat hospitality and the challenge of lengthening supply chains and feeding cities without disadvantaging rural communities has often been analysed (from Homer on). Good supplies make successful empires and attracts migrants and conversely famine has a key role in their decline particularly if the rich do not intervene to help [47, 48].

Genetic and nutrigenomic studies have added to our understanding of cultural interactions and farming and pastoralist (4–6000 year) innovations allowing for use of milk and fermentation products and cereals [49]. Research now describes the spread of meat-eaters (and Indo-European languages) from the Pontic steppe with the Yamnaya-related migration and risk of some diseases (such as multiple sclerosis) but of overall success. Interactions with pathogens from close proximity to domestic animals emerged as population densities increased influenced the pattern of HLA and other immune complexes that now act as risk factors for inflammatory disease [50, 51]. Copper and gold metallurgy may have shone bright but meat (and its preservatives like salt) was the real currency.

Loci for decreasing skin pigmentation were under strong selection in (Caucasian)groups moving north-west usually attributed to reduced ultra-violet exposure and Vitamin D deficiency. Skin would also need less protection from sunburn made worse by Vitamin B3 deficiency so is less severe on high meat diets and this may have been another enabling pressure [52].

The role of farmer-pastoralist interactions and a balanced diet was later achieved by colonial livestock farming became the most wide-ranging and enduring of all extractive and exploitative industries. This contrasts with indigenous traditions that appreciate prey as feeling beings and have more sustainable practices as natural cycles, particularly the nitrogen cycle, are less disrupted in “metabolic rifts” created by not returning animal (and human) faeces to the soil and having to use imported and artificial fertilisers. Meat drives much inequality within and between societies and was the origin of material, relational and embodied wealth (food caches, shelters and territorial inheritance even happens in animal societies) [53, 54, 55]. Superior diet, height, and “cognitive flexibility” connect in this scenario with skin pigmentation – suggesting deep roots for discrimination and racism.

2.3 Niche construction, social contracts and hierarchies

Multi-level human evolution relied upon upgrades in both NAD genetics and the nicotinamide supply as high meat and milk and “runaway” niche construction with competition between individuals and societies. Increased variances in the supply and descending the food chain to more omnivory increased variation in cognitive abilities and fertility overcoming population bottle-necks and allowing for division of labour (Figure 2) [38, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61]. We will argue if these inequalities become too extreme there is a risk of falling in to an evolutionary trap with high population growth alongside malnutrition and much friction within and between states underlying the poly-crisis of the Anthropocene [62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67]. The social contract between classes means that a state’s primary responsibility is to provide adequate subsistence to its population with safety from external threats (whether rivals or microbes). Historical lessons tend to concentrate on grain and calories not meat and vitamins and get diverted from “freedom from want” (Figure 3) [68, 69, 70]. Many frictions and migrations may at base be food riots emanating from ignoring the politics of provision and the rich not stepping up when needed or their philanthropic aims hiding a capitalist need for more consumers [71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78].

Figure 2.

Our argument is that diet and metabolism are important in forming classes and that if this gets too extreme with “beef barons” and a “lumpenproletariat” or “precariats” it breaks a social contract and risks revolutions and societal collapses.

Figure 3.

Pellagra is our case and historical lens viewing lack of meat and its consequences from creating hierarchies within and between states.

2.4 Lombroso et al.: criminality, stigmata, atavism, race and colour

Cesare Lombroso, a nineteenth century Italian pellagra-ologist, noted their feeblemindedness and bad behaviour. He is seen as “the father of criminology” as he developed a theory of “the born criminal” and the degenerate atavistic and addiction prone “l’uomo delinquente”. Race was integrally woven in to his theory of atavism which equates white men with civilisation and black, brown and yellow peoples with “primitive” or “savage” societies [79].

Colour is not a constant marker as the Irish and Italians “whitened up” as migrants (on improved diets), at times slaves were white, and Jews who could be any colour were subject to a “hybrid hate” [80, 81, 82]. Although phrenology methods were disproven the idea of palettes and outward stigmata “epidermalization of inferiority” and “colour lines” (with the exception of Indian castes) persisted. This fits with the response to the butterfly rash of pellagra (and to lepers) encouraging segregation of degenerate “cockroach” underclasses that need cleansing aided by classificatory gazes [83, 84, 85, 86].

Bentham even suggested “identity washing” with chemical dyes to mark the faces of paupers in his proposed panoptical workhouses. Davenport in the USA, influenced by the pellagra epidemic believed that pellagrins were a genetically determined subhuman species or “Homo Sacer” and believed in social Darwinian and eugenic views eventually corrected by Goldberger [87]. 185. Such views nevertheless persist [88] despite earlier (1680) condemnation that slaves were “Unman’d and Unsoul’d”. The basic question “Is he/she not a human being?” can be cloaked with much pseudo- scientific gloss or referring to “the curse of Noah”. Remissions happen when alliances from self-interest aligns in solidarity, first from Bacon’s early (1676) “rainbow alliance” in Virginia and the need for a “lucrative humanity.” This easily fails as, in France where, despite a “race blind” constitution, police can state that they are at war with “vermin” with echoes in America with immigrants described as “animals” and threatened with a “bloodbath” [89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96].

2.5 Meat, Omnivory and reciprocal altruism in early human evolution that became unequal first in societies and progressed between nations

If atavism can be caused by too little meat [97] then higher meat intake would be expected to have been important in our original evolution [98, 99, 100, 101]. Our ancestral diet was rich in meat (later cooked), vegetables and fruit. We outsourced ascorbic acid and never developed stores for nicotinamide (short of autophagy) creating potential mismatches from scurvy to pellagra. It is a myth that we are natural vegetarians but plants have been important to the evolution of our minds with psychedelics and were important to inequalities through plantocracies and plantations. Medicines from quinine onward, stimulants such as tea, coffee and chocolate and addictive drugs such as rum and opium let alone tobacco and sugar have all played their part in class and other forms of warfare including ‘brain washing’ [102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107].

The neolithic agricultural revolution led to an increase in malnutrition, zoonoses and risk of pellagra a primordial disease and Achilles heel [108]. The long history (such as Lent) of meatless diets and days or plant-based or artificial meats are rarely popular compared with the desire for meat [109, 110, 111]. Meat sharing with various forms of direct, indirect and reciprocal altruism was the norm including for non-kin with feasts and potlatches. Sharing is no longer the local or global default case even if some empathy over hunger lurks underneath [112, 113, 114].

All continents and early nations had a hierarchy of meat availability with meat and metropolitan elites. Hunters and gatherers were out reproduced by farmers despite their health and height being poor and were often conquered by nomadic pastoralists [64, 115, 116, 117, 118]. In the UK “Cheddar man” was first overtaken by farmers from Turkey and then (5000 years ago) by steppe pastoralists forming “cities of beasts” [119]: Parallels exist with the European colonisation of the Americas when tiny numbers of Spanish conquistadores with advanced guns and steel vanquished meat poor cognitively and immunologically impaired empires aided by the inadvertent introduction of decimating pandemics [120, 121].

Nutritional status and “status syndromes” and rights are documented [122, 123, 124]. The rich could hunt deer on common land and forests whereas the poor were criminalised for poaching and often not allowed to raise pigs or to fish with lost rights of pannage or gleaning. Early opposition culminated in the Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest (1217) [125]. This meat hierarchy is a form of “elite capture” within societies and then extended to a “tyranny of (colonial)nations” but, we say, is now a developmental over-run and a planet sized market failure of “vulture capitalism” [126, 127, 128, 129].

2.6 Famines: acts of god to acts of man - crime scenes

Diet profoundly affects human phenotypes indeed studies during colonial times showed that different diets related to different tribal characteristics including height and (brain)health and the incidence of TB with food having its own cultures and sociology preceding other forms of culture and civilisation spoilt by famines [130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135].

Famines were often related to climate change and volcanic activity such as the Tomboro ash cloud (Indonesia 1816) and the “year without summer” with harvest failures said to be the last great subsistence crisis in the west. England needed to import food from the now devolved nations as well as the Baltic and China in order to avoid revolution in a food crisis. Earlier famines linked to the “little ice age” of the 1600s and the fourteenth century “Great famine” were, like others, followed by zoonotic plagues. Meat intake and pay can increase to the benefit of survivors but there must be a better than allowing another “Black Death” [136, 137, 138, 139, 140].

As Sen first emphasised “Starvation is the characteristic of some people not having enough to eat not of there being not enough food to eat”. “Meat transitions” are in progress but not everywhere, such as Africa. Many rulers have recognised the importance of an adequate calorific diet and, overall, the incidence of state induced famines has fallen and the degree of (childhood) malnutrition described in Victorian England is no longer often seen. However, this is often at others expense and even as want turned to plenty a “superabundance” was not for everyone even in rich countries [29, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145]. “Super-boosterism” contributes to less emphasis on social safety nets and adequate diets [146, 147, 148].

Upper- class beneficiaries and “parasitic” countries can be forgetful. The Peterloo massacre and the Cato- street conspiracy started as a peaceful protest over the price of bread not unlike the “Arab Spring”. Concerns over food instigated the welfare states but vested interests can cause famine elsewhere and “Victorian holocausts” [93, 149, 150, 151]. Bread riots (and hunger strikes), often instigated by mothers were important to the “tempers and terrors” recalling the spectre of 1789 asking for basic provisions and land reform [73, 152].

“The poor were thus deprived of their lands” (Plutarch on Gracchus’s (133 BC) unsuccessful attempts at land reform) was an early insight but did not stop the rise of private property and enclosures or expropriation by settler (e.g. Americas and Australasia) or non-settler farming (e.g. India) or Plantations (e.g. Caribbean) to supply the centre and the subordination of weakened then dependant colonial peoples. Dispossessed people were forcibly moved to marginal (heath)lands or to dangerous places (such as the Bengal Archipelago). Scorched earth policies have a long military history from ancient times to the seventeenth century 30-year war but using food as a “weapon of war” took off in the twentieth century as we will later catalogue [153].

2.7 Civilised? Diet is caste, character and competence

Writers from Cobbett to Orwell, took a wide view of culture, not just its pinnacles, and the importance of basic economic needs for all to establish their imagination. Mirabeau (1750’s)[154] emphasised that the newly minted term civilisation was not about superficial politeness or civility but had a moral dimension and should allow all to flourish -and be judged in a local context, rather than “civilising missions” used to emphasise the superiority and justice of their own empire. Food was key to- “humanization” and should not be supplied just to avoid more revolts “bellum servile.” Cross-fertilisation on frontiers rather than cultural destruction or “melting pots” led to many inventions including on the dietary front but notably all (haute) cuisines had meat as the centrepiece and when available also for the poor even if more as stews and pies [155, 156, 157, 158].

Starvation, by contrast, as a weapon is highly effective as “atrocity famines” but is a relatively crude “de-humanization” tool killing by caloric deficiency. We highlight the advantages (as a weapon) of the more subtle nicotinamide deficiency as pellagra’s even mild forms impair cognition alongside as social skills.

The Freudian idea of the “narcissism of minor differences” allows for such small differences to grow into homophilia and fear of others with racism and sectarian aggression and “clashes of civilisation”. Vengeance becomes inter-generational once “guns have been fired”. “Supremacists” can target a sub-population already on a low meat diet and further limit their access to meat (by various means) increasing their “inferiority” and “hidden injuries” in a self-fulfilling and demonising dehumanising process “justifying” dispossession and bigotry [159, 160, 161, 162]. And slavery. Prejudice and ‘one stop’ legal issues obstruct mixed marriages and “Empires Children” even though miscegenation and “hybridisation” improves population vigour, avoids speciation and ultimately reduces racial conflict with mixed-race people potentially having the “best of both worlds” (already the largest single ethnic group in Brazil many descended from slaves) [163, 164, 165].

2.8 Chattell slavery: meat, masters and power in the old south

Contemporaneous sources on slavery and de-or dis-humanisation include the insight that “nowhere was the process by which slaveholders converted black hunger into white supremacy more apparent than in the processing and distribution of meat” even though “the general opinion was that Negroes worked much better for being supplied three or four pound of bacon a week”(observations confirmed later in south Africa) creating an early “Meat Paradox” [166, 167, 168, 169]. “Seasoning” was a term for acclimatising slaves on slave ships to very poor diets and a high mortality and morbidity that included features of pellagra such as dysentery to break their spirit for gang labour. Slaves were deemed, to be not human but commercial property and like animals “beasts of burden” with no souls or identity (but nevertheless feared including sexually). For many years anti-slavery laws applied at home but not on the colonies where even licences to hunt bushmen were obtainable until 1936 [170, 171, 172]. Other forms of slavery persisted as convict labour and as “coolies” and other forms of modern slavery often affecting women and children [173, 174].

Rations for slaves rarely included meat outside “command performance” feast time gifts in exchange for subservience and the means of (cotton and sugar)production (or in exchange for sex). Rarely slaves were allowed to garden and keep fowl or pigs and hunt or fish. Inland, food was imported to allow more cotton fields and arguments to retain pastureland were usually over the need for manure. Supplies were poor and fatty pork (fat contains no nicotinamide) with monophagic corn and molasses are pellagra-genic diets. Owners stole black mother’s milk even though the babies were the source of the social reproduction and a commodity that could be sold or used as collateral [175, 176, 177].

Malnutrition was well recognised in cotton and sugar economies before the officially recognised pellagra epidemics post-emancipation [178, 179]. Owners created a hierarchy with house slaves having better access to meat than field slaves and a strain of paler (often mulatto) “upper crust” slaves that seeded intra-racial hierarchies for future generations [180]. Thieving and a “black market” was common with perpetrators often suspected and severely punished because of their healthy appearance or suspicious cooking smells (a parallel with rooting out those not cooking pork by the Spanish Inquisition [180].

The desire for meat and the formation by runaways of “maroon” and well-fed Seminole colonies are well recorded. “Negro Forts” in Florida were attacked in wars and famously won by slaves in Haiti by “Black Spartacus” (although punitive reparations to France and trade embargos by the US caused widespread poverty and current anarchy and gang warfare) [181, 182, 183, 184]. Runaway migrations could prosper if the food supply improved as did the mass migrations to the Americas or Australasia even though the initial quality of the migrants included convicts. When well-fed (with higher IQ than southern whites) turned in to well-connected commercially and politically white on black race “backlash” riots on “uppity” people developed famously in Wilmington (1898) [185] and Tulsa (1921) that although illegal went unpunished [186, 187].

Other telling stories include the violent repression after a rebellion in Morant Bay in 1865, that fed the abolitionist movement led by the Quakers and boycotts promoting “ethical capitalism” and “brands with a conscience” on foods made by slaves, mainly sugar. Wilberforce’s campaigns led to eventual abolition but compensated slave owners not the slaves. Poor diets and sugar going on to damage health notably now in Caribbean “amputation capitals” [188, 189]. All happened amidst a proud history of slaves introducing sustainable farming and care of the soil but due to constraints, developed their own cuisine and soul foods that spread globally as “Fast Food Genocides”. Righting dietary wrongs is a route to effective reparations and help for poor people worldwide [190, 191, 192].

2.9 Insult to injury

Slave owners as plantation managers slashed and burned and wrecked irrigation destroying mixed farming locally. Enormous profits from the cotton, sugar and tobacco markets financed meat imports amongst other luxuries funding capitalism and the industrial revolution. 23. “Imperial amnesia” downplays this entropic process. Improved metabolism benefited Europe then America but exported and off-shored chaos with colonial “ghost acres” in the “scramble for Africa”. Triangular or Diamond trades and tariffs then as now favoured the already rich and exported class distinctions and differential meat intakes and related biopower across the globe [193, 194, 195].

Abolition came with compensation, of 1-200 billion given to the slave owners who continued with indentured, sharecropper and other wage slaves. The countries from which the slaves were taken continue to be the poorest in Africa, have the highest inter-ethnic conflict, continue to be exploited for their meat and fish and have well recorded outbreaks of pellagra [23]. Many forms of neo-slavery involve agri-and aqua- cultural workers [196, 197, 198, 199]. Modern slaves (30 million or so) are offered loans to avoid starvation as debt bondage or forced labour and are cheap so there is less incentive than with chattel slavery to keep them healthy enough to reproduce making them truly disposable labour [200].

2.10 Politics of hunger and nutritional terrorism

America an originally pastoralist society that, like the Luddites, resisted industrialisation for a while offers other lessons 163. Industrialisation and capitalism when they came led to the great depression and widespread hunger with little federal (or charitable support). This was overcome by the “New Deal” (that however largely excluded many minorities subject to “redlining” and other Jim Crow laws) and a return to agricultural basics. America became a paradox of plenty with many still hungry yet becoming a major exporter of food and a major component of the post WW2 Marshall plan for anti-communist friendly states. Internal policies of opposition to food aid were later described as terrorism particularly against black people as was the “War on Alcohol” (and later drugs). 50.51. Black Panthers recognised that poor whites were also affected “Hunger knows no colour line”. Although their salutation “power to the people” was disliked their breakfast clubs were imitated and other supportive policies and food stamps and school meals introduced.

Further advances were made when the meat economy was exposed by Sinclair’s book The Jungle led to the passage of meat inspection law and later by Ralph Nader leading to greater safety for employees and customers but inequalities and dangers persist [201, 202].

2.11 Unlocking the central dilemma

Olmsted (1850s) [203] believed that the central dilemma for the master slaveholder class was “how without quite destroying the negro for any work at all to prevent him from learning and take care of himself. Slaves were criticised for “rascality” (dysaesthesia ethiopica) and for their “desires”. Although the “means of production” slaves were denied the fruits of their labour and subject to “social death and natal alienation” with slaves (and their children) and livestock auctions having much in common [204, 205]. This picture had contradictions with some Westerners admiring other races and their cultures themselves recognising “talented tenths” who were not always sympathetic to their own [206].

Antislavery men and women, then and now, mock such hypocrisy arguing for a “moral economy” that allowed social mobility up “Great Gatsby curves” out of peasantry with poor diets impairing human capital (Bourdieu’s “habitus”) and educational “portable property” [207]. Rectifying “post code” diets for “Precariats” would improve luck in the lottery of life [208, 209]. Good diet, we say, provides the “special sauce” and “recipe” for success with increased height and (brain) health and social networks [210, 211]. Countries lucky with natural resources giving a comparative advantage may succumb to the “Dutch disease” or “resource commodity curse” if they do not vire windfall money back into agriculture and diet sharing the bounty and reducing inequality.: Unlucky countries may have trouble avoiding outright exploitation of their low labour costs but should learn from previous dehumanisation experiments to prioritise diet if at all possible [212, 213, 214].

2.12 De and dis-humanisation

Dehumanisation by starvation is never complete, although the “law of the jungle” can take over, providing the supremacists with a social Darwinian justification for further limitations on access to society. These can validate land expropriations and exterminations or warrants for genocide by the usually Aryan, masters of “sub-humans” low on the “Great Chain of Being”, and close to animals. Pellagrins and others with low IQ were accepted as human but their dangerous behavioural edge considered them “monsters” and the “superior” perpetrators could justify killing or incarcerating them for their own good or allow the provision of poor health services and segregated asylums [215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220].

Selective breeding had a lot to do with racial thinking as hunting animals and pets were considered superior to some humans, and often fed more meat [221].

2.13 Degeneration of the race: pellagra as paradigm

Worries about degeneration and metamorphosis of the race was a common nineteenth century theme alongside replacement worries from high fertility amongst the poor [222]. Concerns that extended to humans speciating were about keeping the poor or sick alive to reproduce have dissipated but will not disappear until actions and lessons from pellagra accepted [223].

Compassion fatigue is not helped by distance with many starvation tragedies passing almost unnoticed even when children are affected (currently Sudanese and Tigrayan) and could impair “euthenic” dietary help and a civilising re-humanisation. Poor diet by affecting social capital makes it look like it is the fault of the corrupt disorganised “lazy native”. Subjects in the past were willing recruits to the army or navy, but recruitment officers realised they were poor material and needed to be fed better influencing national programs (such as after the humiliation of the Boer War). Meat rations for soldiers and sailors were generous and led to reductions in the “white man’s burden” of tropical diseases and TB and made them better fighters so these experiments have already been done.

This is a re-testable as preventing deficiency of nicotinamide by allowing access to meat and dairy on merit worldwide would be a low risk “gamble on development” but first let us discuss various forms of caste and class in relationship to the “Butterfly Caste”.

3. Part two: classes, castes and countries

3.1 Making classes

During our long hunter-gather-fisher evolution Homo sapiens having increased meat intake compared with our primate forbears was strongly meat egalitarian [224, 225]. Since the agricultural neolithic slow revolution there have been “meat elites” in all civilisations [226, 227]. This has been felt to be the effect of rich people preferring meat or showing off. We argue that high meat intake aided by availability of beans s (important in Meso-America and the Renaissance) allowed for “superior” ruling, high priest, officer and administrative class—whereas lower meat favoured a proletariat worker and soldier/sailor class with high fertility [226, 227, 228, 229, 230]. Except when extreme this increased variation (in a rather isogenic species) and neurodiversity may be of benefit with an interdependence between the classes that allows some social mobility. This social contract and “civilised civil war” can easily break down and is not meritocratic if many are nutritionally deprived. In our recent history the working classes could be enforced vegetarians compared with very high meat intakes by the rich to the level of gluttony. Such excesses may not be that good as improving brain function might lead to a “divided brain” that is too individualistic and “mad with modernism” as well as being risk factors for “diseases of affluence” some linked to high nicotinamide levels and induction of NNMT [152, 231].

Class-ridden societies can be successful although fail if the “scorpion” sting of a four Ds of disruption, deprivation, disease and death are not mitigated by redistribution [232, 233]. As a former US president said, “hungry people are not peaceful people” and many international conflicts and “forever wars”, have escalated from minor quarrels over pastureland and water and oil or tragedies of the commercial sea and land commons [234, 235, 236, 237, 238].

3.2 Making castes

The best-known example of a caste system is in India (with analogies made with African-American slaves history and slave/soul food [239]) and is diet related. At first glance this does not fit our hypothesis given the sacred nature of cattle in religion and the reputation for the highest caste Brahmins being vegetarian. However dairy consumption with milk, butter and ghee was high amongst the higher castes and not eating meat may be a recent development [240, 241, 242]. The untouchable Dalits are excluded from society and like lower castes are restricted by educational, occupational and marriage laws that their poor diet reinforces. Brahmin diets are not that different to western flexitarian diets and as in the West “Brahmin” elite power controls, cultural, social and legal issues. Legal restrictions on Hindu castes have had little effect despite being proposed for “annihilation” by Ambedkar (1936) [243]. “Castes of mind” are holding back India’s (agricultural)developmental and democratic progress. Breaking this system may, like class, has to come from a bottom-up diet improvement and then educational approach [240, 243, 244, 245].

3.3 Making races: columbian to colonial times “Race and Space”

Races became a political and taught issue from the time of the Columbian exchange and further Colonialism as food and meat became redistributed and weaponised as “Ecological Imperialism” and “Empires of Food” begun by the Ancients [246]. The Americas were, poorly off for natural animal domesticates so the indigenous peoples may have been disadvantaged cognitively; this subclinical deficit may, to this day, explain discrimination and antipathy against Mexican Hispanics and Latinos. The Americas gained from imported cattle, sheep and goats that multiplied on the new pastureland on ranches aided by horses being re-introduced. Maize travelled east and contributed to the outbreaks of pellagra in Europe as unlike central America cultural adaptations such as growing with beans and cooking with lime to increase nicotinamide content were not followed [246, 247, 248].

Hunter-gatherer Indian tribes became nomads heavily reliant on bison for meat also hunted by Europeans (more for their leather) contributing to their extinction and the now reliant tribes. Indian wars and the Cherokee’s “Trail of Tears” moved to reservations from their hunting lands all led to death, malnutrition and little meat. Doubly ungrateful as the Jamestown colony was dependant on Algonquian peoples for food symbolised in the thanksgiving dinner [249]. Similar events occurred in Australasia where Aboriginal peoples were forced to steal the livestock of the interlopers who retaliated with massacres.

Meanwhile many, mostly white, in the “Red Meat Republic” thrived and exported meat to Europe particularly after the invention of refrigeration and steam train and ships [250]. Immigrants also thrived many from hunger-prone Europe on the better diet and some such as the Irish and Italians initially discriminated against were eventually accepted by many as not inferior and “white” with the earlier bias originating from the Irish famine and pellagra outbreaks in Italy with a parallel, for blacks and whites in the Southern states.

3.4 Ireland and the cotton state pellagra outbreak

The Irish famine and 1 million deaths in the mid nineteenth century when the potato dependant population was reduced to eating donkeys and dogs during “Black” 1847 drove 2 million to emigration. Although caused by the potato blight famine was exacerbated by Ireland being essentially a plantation colony for England that avoided outright slavery;(as were the Scottish “clearances”) using arable land for cattle and sheep to send to the centre. “A government backed Malthusian correction “reducing surplus population” by not supplying (Trevelyan’s) corn began-but there was significant opposition to this policy of “coldly persisting in a policy of extermination” that eventually prevailed. This did not stop repeat attempts in in the 1944 Burmese famines that led to widespread malnutrition and three million dead complicated by scorched earth policies and confiscated fishing boats in case of Japanese invasion [251].

Returning to the southern “cotton” states slaves and sharecroppers already on poor diets suffered when the cotton market failed and caused the American outbreak of pellagra around 1900. The “butterfly caste” was born and genetics or infection blamed until Goldberger proved it was dietary and was later proven to be nicotinamide deficiency in the 1940s. Much racism was born at this time as Jim Crow and “southern and confederate” ethnocentric strategies polarised and heightened racial conflict.

Poor slave and southern diets continued after the civil war even after the exodus north and remain a health hazard and impede breaking through economic glass ceilings to this day as recognised by city mayors in the USA [252]. Such pellagra-genic diets merged some foods, such as “black rice” and maize, as “agrarian creolization” born out of poverty and limited access to poor quality fatty pork or “fried chicken” that then expanded as an emblematic fast food [253]. Other city mayors in Europe have led integrated strategies for food system change and extending access to healthy and organic foods and reducing food insecurity and pollution as have some countries such as Vietnam and Uganda.

3.5 Settler and plantation farmers redux: milking assets

Settler farmer colonies drove indigenous tribes to extinction “exterminate the brutes” and denial of their property rights. This was justified by “Terra nullius” (implying they were not using) or “Tragedy of the Commons” (implying they were abusing the land by overgrazing). Settler farmers, such as in Australasia, fed themselves and exported meat and other foods back to the centre [254, 255]. Plantation colonies produced tropical goods such as sugar and tobacco (and cotton) or rubber (as in the Belgium Congo) or spices (as in the Dutch Indonesia but destroyed local farming practices and local diets [256].

Occasionally slaves were helped by imported crops but these were carbohydrates such as bread fruit and usually were fed sugary diets. The Caribbean became a “blood and sugar” war zone involving slaves, indentured classes, and distant rulers.

In India rather than the sole use of (tea)plantation tactics local industry was ruined (such as cotton garment manufacture, first by the East India Company) and taxes were high even for peasants and agricultural improvements not supported in favour of Britain who then used profits and tax income (not spent locally) to import more meat for themselves. Famines resulted book-ending the Indian Empire. To this day sugar cane labour is brutal in India to keep sugar flowing to companies like Coke and Pepsi with child labour and coerced sterilisation of working-age women suggesting we have not moved far on from earlier times and other colonial atrocities.

3.6 African colonies and an early genocide

In Namibia (German south-west Africa) an early genocide took place by driving the Herero normally robust cattle herders into the desert or labour camps where they starved. (The lack of an international outcry influenced Hitler’s thinking). South Africa had first been colonised by the Dutch (east India company) who obtained meat to continue their journey from local pastoralists often by force. Africa like the Americas was already not well off for animal domesticates and had a high count of carnivorous predators and animal infections such as trypanosomiasis in the tsetse belt (and later rinderpest imported from Europe). The Dutch and the British managed to destroy and even hunt the local Khoikhoi (Hottentots) and San bushmen and ruin grazing land (despite spirited resistance) reducing gazelle, ostrich and eland populations (used by trekboers to make biltong). Such activities caused outbreaks of starvation and pellagra exacerbated by the Boer wars and the British invention of concentration camps and reservations. This chain of expropriative events and the underlying dietary link with the dehumanising pellagra here as in the southern USA or Latinos in Mexico is not a coincidence and a trifid butterfly effect that spread widely as a racist and sexist “necro-politics” driving apartheids and haves and have-nots and much violence as homicide and femicide capitals [257, 258].

3.7 Diet and the patriarchy: gender heath gaps

Women as unpaid domestic labour and their children had a higher incidence of pellagra than the men who “brought home the bacon.” This phenomenon was common in history and even in the 1970s “the mistress of the house takes the smallest steaks without thinking”. This dietary constraint may well have contributed in recent centuries to perceived gender inferiority [259, 260, 261]. Hunter gatherer societies were mostly egalitarian as were some early villages and cities. Some claim early societies were either gender neutral or-even matrilineal with female goddesses such as in Catalhoyuk (7000 BC). Here the diet of men and women were equal until they mixed with nomadic and more meat eating “Aryan and Mongol” mounted invaders from the steppes. Patriarchy may have begun then with cattle owning and male meat elites with suffragette movements much later assisted by somewhat improved meat supplies in the mid-nineteenth century, at least in the west [262, 263, 264]. Extremes of misogyny including witchcraft may have had some basis in poor low meat diets with men even managing to blame women when supplies were poor [265, 266, 267, 268]. Paradoxically war and fear of war can be good for women and babies treated as “undeserving”as it is realised that health of children is important to produce healthy soldiers although women then object as their sons are used as “cannon fodder” [269].

3.8 Undeserving poor: living well at others expense and rise of populism

The idea of an “undeserving” poor” who would have had a largely vegetarian pro-pellagrous diet has been a very persistent idea instigating policies that often made their diet even worse in a self-fulfilling prophesy that became racialized [270]. Solidarity movements within countries and internationally have usually failed by “divide and conquer” strategies and collaborations by self-interested subsets with the ruling castes. Over a century ago racial solidarity as “Workers of the World Unite” was undermined in South Africa with Indian and Chinese “coolies” siding with the white British and Boers establishing their supremacy.

Populist movements where there was temporary solidarity were between British Lancashire cotton workers (who suffered badly from the interrupted supply) and American slaves in the USA by supporting the Civil war. In the UK some transracial progress was made when proposing an “undeserving rich” living and eating well at others (and the environments) expense often dated from Beatrice Webb’s minority report, or Cobbetts nineteenth century “Rural Rides.” This theme was later taken up by Beveridge and Atlee: although diet was never a major feature of the welfare system or the NHS [271, 272]. Better education and withdrawal of child labour (even as it reduced household income) helped as did the rise of the unions and civil rights for industrial labour and democracy (decline dated in the UK from the 1980’s Coal Miner strikes that broke labour’s backbone 222). Good diet remains stubbornly class dependant as originally intended for the ruling classes and the “Victorian Raj” with unacceptable levels of food insecurity during cost- of- living crises and the need for food banks in leading economies [273, 274, 275, 276]. Recognising that the “super-rich” hoarding of vast fortunes is needless and inefficient with a large “opportunity cost” let alone inhumane, uncivilised and dangerous would be a start and even the rich should heed di Lampedusa’s memorable line from the Leopard “if we want everything to stay as it is, everything has to change”.

4. Conclusion

Meat and nicotinamide intake was important to human evolution and our early egalitarian history and lack of meat, with overt pellagra at the extreme related to hierarchical extremes and dehumanisation. Pellagra can be seen as a Sherlockian “curious case of the dog in the night-time” that, although no stranger, has not barked as it has largely been forgotten. Natural variances in meat availability became exaggerated during the agricultural revolution as later did social and intercontinental inequalities. Meat intake is consistently lower in lower castes and classes and in countries with natural or now largely acquired or imposed impediments to the supply. Fights to acquire a better resourced supply has instigated may wars and land and water grabs. The singular case of pellagra shows how treatable and preventable these stresses are but as it has never been screened for one should not generalise but must accept that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence—an argument—to be continued in our companion chapter.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Christina Wood for the support with the infographics.

Conflict of interest

The authors have no conflicts of interest.