A Perspective on Prevention of Wars and Pandemics with Lessons from the Case of Pellagra

Abstract

Pellagra is caused by nictotinamide, the precursor to NAD, dietary deficiency. Pellagrins suffer from poor cognitive and social skills and was cured with nicotinamide (vitamin B3). Before then pellagrins were considered inferior and dangerous degenerates known as the “Butterfly Caste” after the diagnostic sunburn rash—Casal’s necklace. Subclinical pellagra is an effect and a cause of poverty, social inequality gaps and friction. Dehumanising diets becomes a justification for ostracising or killing people paving the way to an even worse diet in vicious cycles that lead to war and pandemics. Livestock farming and meat for the rich has been an enduring “megatrend” over the last 6–8000 years and acquiring the necessary resources, such as pastureland, is behind colonisation and trade wars. A consequence is NAD—disadvantaged “inferior” people. This would be cost-effective to correct and create a safer world by reducing (civil) war, and migration, and by improving health and wealth reducing risk of pandemics in a more ecologically sustainable world.

1. Introduction

In our companion chapter we have given evidence and the backstory on the role of meat and nicotinamide in human evolution and early history and the dehumanising effects of too little milk and meat in diet with overt pellagra being the “tip of the iceberg”. Here we take narrative this forward to the present day illustrating how natural variances in the availability of meat have become exaggerated and when low can be implicated in many wars whether civil or national, need for migration and risks of zoonotic pandemic much of which could be prevented whilst reducing green-house gas emissions. Here as with poverty and inequality low meat diets can be seen as both the cause and the consequence of war including trade decisions that we need to illustrate first before we can address and appreciate the urgency and cost-effectiveness of solutions that create well tested positive feed-back loops to prosperity.

2. Part one: wars and more genocides

Many of not most wars in ancient times were about acquiring pastureland and water to raise livestock with some modern wars even named after foods such as the “cod or scallop and even sea cucumbers wars” or after the need for fertiliser whether guano or potash [1]. Genocide also has a long history from ancient times, as documented by Thucydides, through to “Warrior” genocides (as by the Mongols). Some wars were to obtain captives for cannibalism as in ancient meso-America and everywhere cattle rustling was common livestock being a major source of capital wealth and exchange as in marriage contracts. Trading and wars between sedentary agriculturalists and mounted Steppe Nomads were frequent on frontiers where a balanced diet would have been a common result as it was where mixed farming was possible.

20th century World Wars gives much food for thought [2]. Germany had its sights on increasing its eastern European and African empire leading up to WW1. After the starvation during WW1and the strict restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles Hitler’s views were closely linked to Lebenstraum (living space). Self-sufficiency (autarky) for food and expansion to the East strictly for the German people was policy. Hitler’s eugenic actions began with starvation of the disabled and feeble-minded (“wild euthanasia”) then homosexuals and political opponents before moving on to Roma, Sinti and Jews. Japan had similar Lebenstraum policies in acquiring Manchuria and neither dissimilar to the American frontier and British colonialism. Hitler’s policy was for adequate meat intake for Germans and supported early “alchemy” with ultra-processed foods [3] but instigated extremely low meat rations for Poles and Jews (“useless eaters”). Britain in fact managed food better even at the height of the submarine war by continuing to import meat from America and the colonies alongside meat and egg extracts and vitamins (as in Bovril and Marmite) and “dig for victory” initiatives: rationing was not class related (even if with the rich could supplement in restaurants) contributing to better health for many meat and dairy in effect nationalised (and like the water supply a common good public health idea even now).

Backe’s Nazi “Hungerplan” was explicitly designed as a “war of annihilation” and envisaged the death of umpteen million (“zig Millionen”) Soviet citizens and the colonisation of vast areas of land for German agriculture until stalled by the aborted operation Barbarossa.

2.1 Holodamor and communist genocides in China, Cambodia and North Korea

Not all state ideological policies attacked the poor as those on the totalitarian left targeted rich farmers and intellectuals (many Jewish) first impoverishing them and then leading to mass starvation. In post-revolutionary Soviet Union the Bolshevik Stalin singled out the kulaks (anyone having 2 or more cows) around 1930 as part of collectivisation leading to at least 10 million deaths [4, 5, 6]. Many died in the “Bloodlands” and fertile “Black Earth” of Ukraine and Kazakhstan particularly when combined with forced exiles to Siberia where farming was close to impossible. Long term dietary effects were, not helped by Lysenko’s Lamarckian theories missing out on the Green mendelian revolution. Meat became almost unobtainable with long queues outside butchers.

China’s “Great Leap Forward” (1958) did not have had faminogenic intent but managed to kill 40–50 million as it industrialised. Cases of cannibalism even of babies were described as in Russia. Declining incomes from 980 to 1850 when markets were opened up held back China’s meat transition creating a Malthusian trap with population explosions [7].

Cambodia (1975-) bombed heavily in the Vietnam war that disrupted agriculture (agent orange is a herbicide) caused chaos in the countryside allowed the rise of the autarkic (refusing international aid) Khymer Rouge. Pol Pot favoured killing directly or by starvation urbanites, “sub-people” and intellectuals but extolled peasants. His “Super Great Leap Forward” resulted in some2 million dying in the “killing fields” and from starvation.

North Korea followed a collectivisation approach to agriculture organised ideologically from the metropolitan centre leading to ravaged harvests and very high levels of malnutrition and famine. “The Arduous March” of 1995 had large spikes in TB incidence (miscategorised as “Public Enemy Number One”) with people eating maize cobs before they were ripened and other famine foods, even grass and more reports of cannibalism emerged.

2.2 Holocaust

Lemkin one of the originators of Holocaust studies and a definer of genocide and “crimes against humanity” and other mass murders was a proponent of the role (somewhat downplayed compared with industrial gassing) of malnutrition. He pointed out overt differences in rationing calories between Germans and Jews and for meat it would have been extreme. Food was even confiscated from new arrivals to Auschwitz and placed in a commercial structure “Kanada” for sale or donation to Germans [8, 9].

The diagnostic butterfly rash was often present. “We noted widespread hypersensitivity toward sunrays in the spring” is a quote from Jewish Physicians first hand descriptions of the “Hunger Disease.”—Relative energy was noted including to TB even though TB was rife (both features of pellagra); allergic disease was not only rare but spontaneous recoveries were seen from previously established cases [10]. Primo Levi’s first- hand description of “Musselman” on the brink of death is suggestive of pellagra—“head dropped and shoulders curved whose face and eyes not a trace of thought was to be seen” [11, 12].

2.3 Interlude: a medical comment

Medicalizing issues has a racial history dating from early colonial times as those with darker skin are resistant to tropical disease such as malaria (sickle cell phenomenon) but also used as an excuse to work them harder as they supposedly felt less pain. Slaves running away (“drapetomania”) could be cured by whipping or if they protested it was because they were “psychologically unfit” for freedom” or psychotic; later their descendants supposed high incidence of schizophrenia became a metaphor for them as a group. A high incidence of TB and a low incidence of allergic disease and cancer became racialised as was their proneness to metabolic syndromes (“Blood Sugar”) and “crack babies” [13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18].

Excess infections (as seen with pellagra) encouraged doctors to consider race contagion (“human- lice”) a public health issue and Nazi racial hygiene policies included starving on purpose. Inhumane experiments were organised by other regimes on indigenous peoples or convicts or orphans [16, 19]. Some trials that were executed are remembered and affect some negative responses to benign vaccination programmes from the early smallpox vaccinations in the New World to Covid compounded by ‘vaccine apartheid’ [20, 21, 22].

Claims that racial groups are genetically prone to illnesses generally consist of delayed responses to delays in improving diet (such as TB and cancer) or are simply incorrect as with the high threshold to pain. These category errors can lead to medical neglect and high death rates including of mothers and infants [23, 24, 25].

2.4 Occupied countries. Greece Holland Belgium Denmark

Greece was hit by the Allies naval blockade aimed at stalling German advances but caused famine. Denmark had to export bacon and deny its own population. The Netherlands is of particular interest as toward the end of the war the “hunger winter” was triggered by rail strikes designed to defy the Axis and late airdrops and child evacuation programs were attempted but the hunger winter was still extreme. Derived statistics have been fertile evidence to support the “foetal origins hypothesis” with higher later risks of obesity, diabetes, dementia and hypertension [26, 27, 28, 29]. Most of these transgenerational epigenetic mechanisms involve nicotinamide metabolism and the methylome [30].

2.5 Spain and the Franco regime: autarky failures on the totalitarian right

Franco copied the Nazi view on autarky but despite Spain being pastoralist rationing had to be introduced. Pellagra and outbreaks of lathyrism were well described. The government egregious method of rationing was biased against opponents of the regime as was the black market—hence the pellagra outbreaks and new underclasses [31, 32]. “Food-fascist” attempts by Mussolini’s Italy in their use of Ethiopia as a source of food extraction also failed but not before they wrecked local farming and pastoralist practices [33].

2.6 Boyd-Orr and the FAO and new deals: lessons not often acted on

Boyd-Orr learning from experiences in WW1 and from colonial studies (several repeated and controlled) in both Africa and India understood the role of diet in defining human (even tribal) variation in physical and mental health, disease and mortality [34, 35]. He made few friends when pointing out class- based malnutrition between the wars (a “yawning gap”). This was supported by research on rickets and iron deficiency, and by trials feeding expectant mothers with higher protein meals. Orr emphasised that malnutrition was a global phenomenon. Important supporters included Roosevelt’s 1941 four freedoms (one from Want) and his (copied) “New Deal” that supported farmers, jobs and redistribution of cash including welfare and minimum wages. Initially these approaches and the promise of the League of Nations looked hopeful (but got derailed by the politics of the cold war) [36].

2.7 Food aid and green revolution

Cold war politics influenced who got sent aid (i.e. not communist sympathisers). American farmers were encouraged to over produce grain (as they had been after WW1) to help Europe and as lend-lease during WW2 and the post-war Marshall plan. Surpluses were either free or subsidised for non-communist countries particularly if they had tropical cash crops that could be traded in return. The green revolution included new synthetic fertilisers and pesticides as well as new hybrids and other genetically modified crops were provided to “friends”. Friction over preferential help (sometimes refused) left Russia starving (“Triumph in Space, Hunger on Earth”) may have led to the eventual Soviet collapse [37] Aid has been criticised for not developing local farming and the use of excessive chemicals damaging the soil and adding to greenhouse gases by affecting carbon and nitrogen cycles. The emphasis on cereals rather than meat, even if some was used as animal fodder, may have stopped many from starving but also allowed Sisyphean population booms on not very balanced diets affecting quality of offspring delaying modernity and lower fertility rates [38].

2.8 Cold war- anti-communist twinned food politics and genocides

During the Cold war, and fear of nuclear annihilation, proxy wars, invasions assassinations and near genocides took place as part of an anti-communist and anti- socialist agenda. Leftist governments in Chile and Guatemala stressed the importance of social and economic justice and condemned colonial attitudes, for example from the United Fruit Company with their land-grabs and neo-slavery, incurring the wrath of the USA. The USA supported right- wing military “covert” coups and a long social deep-freeze affecting indigenous Mayans, mestizos and campesinos condemned them to extreme poverty with Southern solidarity with opposed compatible with Prebisch’s “dependency theory” as they became successors to the Victorian holocausts. Failure to allow such populations to ascend Engel’s curves with a higher meat and dairy in their diet constrains both agricultural and industrial development and modernisation.

Che Guevera and others influenced by these events tried to implement socialist policies and local farmers initiatives and cooperatives to try to eliminate poverty in south America such as in Cuba, Venezuela and Chile; at the same time however some became major exporters of meat and animal fodder at the expense of deforestation supporting the Northern high meat diet.

2.9 Biafra, Ethiopia and Bosnia

In 1968 audiences were shown (now classic) photographs of “Ribby” children (malnutrition is not quite so photogenic) in the secessionist then sieged republic of Biafra in the Nigerian civil war. Oxfam and Médecins Sans Frontières were crucial in responding and in developing the human rights agenda that included diet as recognised by the UNs “Responsibility to Protect” (2005) [39]. Outbreaks of pellagra were well recorded. An unfortunate echo is found with Boko Haram’s insurgency bringing widespread famine and now population explosions in Nigeria likely to cause new atrocity famines with abductions and kidnapping rackets and the current famine situation in the Gaza siege.

Ethiopia after the Italian debacle and then the fall of Haile Selassie (1974), who could not satisfy hunger even for the politically powerful urban lobby, suffered greatly from the “twin horsemen of the apocalypse” war and famine and delayed international actions to “Marxist Ethiopia” in the 1980s. Local policies were implicated alongside drought and environmental degradation that severely affected pastoralists.

Soviet agricultural failures had a lot to do with the rise of Balkan nationalism after the death of Tito (1980) unleashing “ethnic cleansing” and anti-Muslim executions, rapes and starvation. These fratricides with manufactured racial and ethnic groups were started and perpetuated by food resource stresses.

2.10 Recent food hotspot conflicts from Syria to the Sudan: guns versus butter

Syrian troubles came out of the “Arab spring”, that brought down governments in four countries, with bread riots fuelled by religious, ethnic and political forces. Yemen’s recent history also involves food and farming difficulties that became a military target with bombing of food and water facilities. Israel, Gaza and the West Bank separates people from lands with widespread poverty and malnutrition and dehumanisation of Palestinians (“put on a diet”) but actually starved. These arenas have even been used as a laboratory for precision targeting and surveillance in order to sell arms [40].

Rwanda’s genocide, as retribution by the Tutsi on the rebellious Hutu was also based on dwindling food supplies. The wholly artificial colonial ethnic divisions between the better fed “superior” Tutsi pastoralist and Hutu agricultural tribes caused further loss of cattle and grain in a vicious cycle. In Darfur the equivalent were quarrels triggering a full- blown genocide between the “superior” Arab pastoralists (Janjaweed = devils on horse-back) and the black African farmers and like the neighbouring Sahel and Somalia or Gaza show that hope can become wishful thinking once the “genie of war” is out of the bottle” [41].

Big and small nations can have Guns versus Butter debates. Eisenhower (1953) heading a superpower military and agricultural superpower said “every gun that is made, every warship launched signifies a theft from those who hunger and are not fed”. During the Cold war both sides spent enormous amounts as a proportion of GDP on Arms particularly the Soviets who starved their own people. Swollen arsenals and imported guns bought in African and other states can take up to half the national budget as well as labour away from agriculture with hungry soldiers acting like a “horde of Locusts” Figure 1 [42].

Figure 1.

Societies can choose between guns or bombs and butter that may appeal short-term but is a self-inflicted injury long term. A better diet reduces risks of civil and national wars increases democracy and reduces defence and health budgets.

Although all wars have idiosyncratic back -stories common themes are contests over water, livestock and grazing land ownership and repatriation (from white settlers) as seen in Kenya (Mau Mau rebellion in 1950s). Mugabe, in Zimbabwe after achieving independence from white minority rule, even as a nationalist had disastrous food policies keeping him in power but starving the population (especially if imprisoned) whose urbanites he labelled “trash”. Myanmar, the siege and war on the Ughurs, has stories to tell of their “re-education camps” fed on “thin vegetable soups” with technological surveillance that can even monitor caloric intake [43, 44, 45]. In these disputes pellagra outbreaks are well described, and not only in refugees (often smallholder farmers), and likely to be the “tip of the iceberg” but facts are sparse as it is rarely screened for clinically or biochemically.

2.11 Religicide

Anti-Religious and anti-religion “opium of the people” violence has been common but like blaming clashes of civilisation may hide the real conflict over food resources [46, 47]. Religions from pagan times with their rituals, sacrifices and taboos evolved in concert with their ecology and distribution of meat [3, 48]. Northern white protestants after the Reformation would have had the advantages of a higher meat and milk diet compared with southern Catholics. Although there is little doubt about Religicides from the Crusades to the 30 year war since then one can offer multicausal explanations with religion obscuring the real reasons over resources as “proxy wars” now including oil to deliver a balanced diet for the dominant caste whilst starving the opposition. Much has developed under the radar of the “War on Terror” post9/11 such as the situation of the Rohingya Muslims now in Bangladesh camps rife with malnutrition, disease, drug gangs and violence whilst international funding falls to 30cents a day per refugee.

2.12 Social breakdown: roman “divide et impera” to recent zero-sum games

Putnam’s studies in America and the Po valley show how in severe poverty (both were pellagra zones) cooperation and mutual aid can all breakdown with associated rises in racism, populism and less democracy [49, 50, 51]. At the opposite extreme the rise of narcissism, identity politics and “boomer sociopaths” and greedy “gilded age” gourmands happens [52, 53, 54, 55]. This combination of excess overqualified “underused” elites with immiseration of the poor and divide and rule racial or ethnic “southern” policies usually leads to disaster and revolts against illegitimate governments that cannot feed their population and allows wealth to pump away from the poor [56, 57, 58, 59, 60]. Behind the superficial culture wars economic rights and the ascent of Engel’s curve is ignored as the pellagra-ogenic history of the ubiquitous maize when combined with little meat or beans is largely forgotten [61, 62, 63].

2.13 Maize, sub-diagnosable pellagra in a “Plague of Corn”—markers of apartheid

Maize is the common accompaniment of pellagra and is widely grown but if not cooked with lime as it is in meso-America and especially if milled has very low available niacin or tryptophan. Tryptophan can be metabolised to NAD a pathway that is an immune tolerance mechanism allowing for nutritional symbionts even TB (that excretes nicotinic acid) [64]. Biochemical screening with urine estimates of methyl-nicotinamide are rarely done but studies in South Africa at the height of Apartheid of schoolchildren showed that nicotinamide deficiency was present in around 10% of whites, 25% of Indians, 30% of coloured and 45% of blacks [65, 66, 67, 68]. Pellagra was common in prisons especially (Zulu)prisoners of war and in psychiatric hospitals and elsewhere largely from the creation of Black reserves and highly restrictive Land acts from1913 to the 1960s. Supplementation was partially introduced in most places by 2003 and cases have fallen but such foods are unaffordable for many and outbreaks are still recorded.

2.14 Pellagra and TB

Most reports on outbreaks of pellagra in the last 10 years have been in sub-Saharan Africa, such as in Malawi, usually related to humanitarian crises of war often combined with natural and climate related disasters usually drought. TB also is common under these circumstances. Treatment of TB with Isoniazid can unmask pellagra especially when the diet is already poor in meat or milk [69, 70]. Isoniazid is a designer drug and nicotinamide analogue as nicotinamide is a natural antibiotic against TB explain why TB “disappears” on higher meat diets in meat transitions such as the UK 1850–1900. Nicotinamide should not just be given to prevent isoniazid induced pellagra as recently recommended and could cut a Gordian knot by reducing meat injustice in the South.

3. Part two: toward solutions

3.1 Meat transitions (and autarky reverses)

Engel’s law (as modified by Bennett) states that that as people get richer they eat less starch and more meat and milk [71, 72]. We have argued that higher meat intake makes societies richer by increasing human and social capital that then carries on in a virtuous cycle as educational services and institutional governance improve. In other words, meat is a biochemical need not just a want or a luxury to show off with (or trade for sex). Getting ahead on the meat curve may be because of luck with natural domesticates and a well-watered temperate climate or if riches gained from exports such as cotton or oil are used to buy in meat—or direct policies to reclaim pastureland as in 17th century Holland that remains highly successful (despite opening the dikes to keep the French Bourbons out ending their “Golden Age”). Advantages include improved height and (brain) health and longevity with lower fertility and a switch from infections such as TB even if this leads to later onset auto immune and degenerative diseases. The late 19thC UK along with much of Europe and the USA were followed by Japan and China and “Asian Tigers” with India and South America slowly making progress but with most of Africa stalled.

Innovations that engineer vitamins into plants (“orange” sweet potatoes and Vitamin A) or use of meat substitutes (even microbial proteins) may help in the future if activists, such as Greenpeace, do not obstruct GM crops [73, 74]. The low (almost biblical) yields in much of Africa would be transformed by more use of commercial seed varieties, for both cereals and vegetables (such as cassava) and fertiliser (that can now be bespoke after diagnosis in soil laboratories) and use of title deeds and market reforms to help cattle farmers (and even python farms) to gain more meat.

3.2 Milk - white superfood?

Milk contains significant nicotinamide and the potent nicotinamide riboside but has a different genetic and cultural history to meat [75, 76]. All infants with rare exceptions can drink milk but this tolerance to lactose normally wears off in adult life. However, a series of independent genetic modifications arose in herding communities particularly those in northern Europe. Cultural modifications involving the fermentation of milk to yoghurts and cheeses reduced the lactose concentration getting around this problem that otherwise causes gastrointestinal upset [13]. This has led to milk being considered a superfood for “whites” rather than non-whites compounded by less uptake of breast feeding (or in the past robbing black mothers) and access to processed milks for infants. This is an important racial aspect of differential intake of nicotinamide and the incidence of pellagra and kwashiorkor baking in inferior development curable by as little as a glass of milk a day [77, 78].

3.3 Opioids - white or black addictions

Pellagrins are prone to addictions often alcohol even though it is a known cause of pellagra. Pellagrins are documented as cultivating poppies and utilising opioids to relieve their distress. Paradoxically non-whites in the recent opioid crises were somewhat spared to begin with as the belief that they suffered less pain meant they were not initially targeted by drug manufacturers and dealers [79]. Earlier on the Chinese were targeted by the British in the 19thC Opium wars doping them with opioids from Bengal but relieving Britain by reducing very high depressant alcohol intakes in favour of buying Tea from China and later the stimulants coffee and chocolate elsewhere [80, 81]. Less alcohol meant a healthier nicotinamide metabolism. Societies with healthier metabolisms have less problems with addiction including alcohol and opioids and helps prevent “underclasses” and brain-washing.

3.4 Crucial veterinary interventions to improve meat and milk access

Rather unassuming veterinary projects to improve the health of cattle belonging to violently feuding herders in the Ethiopia/Sudan/Kenya/Uganda border had a greater impact on the meat supply than years of efforts by government or aid agencies. For instance, veterinarians can give advice to avoid drought and thirst or starving animals and can help avoid “pastoral dropouts” if herders give up let alone help with vaccination programmes. Budgetary and other problems frequently result in the “breakdown of state veterinary services” [82].

Widespread use of vaccination against Rinderpest, that had ravaged cattle and other domesticate and wild populations (the 1897 epidemic caused an outbreak of pellagra) as has efforts to contain Anthrax and Foot and Mouth disease, have had dramatic effects as to a lesser extent have campaigns to contain trypanosomiasis in the tsetse belt [83].

The history of Rinderpest is worth elaborating [20, 21, 84, 85]. Cattle plagues and “protein famines” date from the onset of domestication of wild aurochs with often 90–95% death rates in herds [83, 86]. Early outbreaks were contained by quarantines and culling in Europe but it exported to Africa and was a major contributor to outbreaks of pellagra. America only took an interest in vaccine development in WW2 believing that Germany might introduce it as biological weapon (as they had tried with Anthrax and Glanders in WW1).

3.5 Climate: volcanic in the past now a dangerous man-made multiplier

The 1930s American dust-bowl was a lesson in how unsustainable agricultural practices can intersect with unlucky climate events and cause hunger and migration. Current examples are described in Madagascar with deforestation and loss of biological diversity and active bushmeat (including lemurs) trades [87]. Desertification sometimes blamed on pastoralists overgrazing is more related to droughts and climate change: healing can take place as in the once rich soils of the Loess plateau in China or the Tigray region in Ethiopia either from governmental initiative or farmers innovations capturing water or regularising land tenure. Rising sea levels endanger many coastal and often poor communities (who have contributed little to emissions) that are already densely populated creating new geopolitical tensions. Harsh winters can kill livestock, as in Mongolia this year. Even in rich countries “redlining” and similar policies mean that the poor live in dangerous flood prone and hotter places needing “tree and concrete equity”. Heatwaves are a “silent killer” and living in these more polluted areas metabolically combines with dietary deficiencies to cause NAD deficient pathology [88].

Meat production gets blamed for very significant contributions to CO2, CH4 and N2O emissions but much relates to industrialised farming with artificial fertilisers needed for animal feed and a breakdown of the natural nitrogen cycle [89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98]. Much can be done to mitigate particularly the potent but short lived green-house gas methane, including less use of ruminants or changing their gut microflora (and reducing methane leaks from landfill sites and mega-leaks from oil wells). We are not arguing for higher meat or milk eating overall but for less waste “a food scandal” and a fairer distribution with lower global variances—even a glass of milk a day would solve many problems for the “bottom billion Figure 2 [99, 100]. Climate change and uncontrolled “water footprints” may however hit meat and fish production hard with land and marine die-offs and risks future supplies [101, 102, 103].

Figure 2.

Variances in food group intakes are too high in all age groups. Figures for the poorest in these countries would look more extreme but would still be manageable with a relatively small shift in wealth and income distribution and less guns.

3.6 Migration: human tides, refugees, brain drains and wastes

Meat quests drove the original human diaspora “out of Africa” contributing, along with climate change, to many animal extinctions both on land and sea. Nomads and agriculturalists may have had frictions, and mixed farming was often difficult and where this broke down, quarrels then wars and refugees emerge driving migration [104, 105, 106].

A “nomad century” may become a reality that is not popular even although modernity has meant that fertility rates are too low in many places to support an increasingly long-lived pensioners [107]. Migrants are frequently described using animal epithets for insects (swarms) or fish (catch and release back) and their quest for survival resisted or criminalised as seen on Mexican, Panamanian and Tunisian migrant superhighways. High mortality rates (some by state facilitated murders) get sanctioned with human rights and civilisational norms ignored including the right to a respectable diet 90.88. However states that manage this well do well as even forced migrations of criminals and other “undesirables” to Australasia (back-sliders for a while with an all- white policy) and the Americas and the migration of those in poverty is evidence that an improved diet is necessary for success. Birth rates are not falling evenly across the world, nor are they falling gently and but in Africa and Asia fertility remain very high as is childhood malnutrition [108, 109]. Concerns of the “Great (white) Replacement” lobby would therefore, rather paradoxically be best met by “flexitarian” diets for all that would even fertility rates, cognition and productivity and reduce migration Figure 3 [110, 111].

Figure 3.

Sustainable answers are available: The rich should eat less meat and the poor particularly in the global south should eat more. Sherman’s 1865 suggestion of allotting “40 acres and a mule” or “homesteading” to enable freed slaves to develop mixed farming and diets may have saved a lot of trouble if it had not been reversed after “reconstruction”. Much can be done at the same time as addressing climate change issues.

3.7 Intergenerational warfare

Epigenetics has shown us how important environmental stresses are to development and both early and late onset disease becoming a life-long malady [112]. Mental trauma is now well recognised as is exposure to teratogens and carcinogens (commoner in poor neighbourhoods) but early dietary trauma and targeted advertising to children of cheap calories may predominate (with limited windows for catch-up). Later unexpected improvements in diet trigger metabolic syndromes in an intergenerational cycle of malnutrition that affects the economic growth of nations and the earning power of individuals as their learning potential is impaired and their ability to ascend the “snakes and ladders” of class and caste [113].

Extraordinary differences on longevity and reaching retirement on good health occur even in rich countries (70% chance in affluent areas but half that at the opposite end of the wealth spectrum and not due to poor adult habits as the death rate at aged 8 is 10fold higher for the poor. These can be compared to 18th C statistics on elite enslaved workers with life expectancies of 60 years working domestically (and having access to leftovers) often lighter skimmed and field workers of 40 years; disadvantages that get passed down generations [48]. Nicotinamide and methylation pathways are important epigenetic pathways and pellagra often appeared to be familial and transgenerational as well as linked to infection and relative energy [114, 115, 116, 117]. This switch from infection to allergy and auto-immune disease was first seen in rich white well- fed communities.

3.8 Biological weapons of mass (self)destruction

Poor diet is not normally thought of as a weapon of mass destruction or ‘menticide’ despite killing, stunting or maiming orders of magnitude more people often through infection. Zoonoses that emerged in the Neolithic and closer proximity to animals continue to be a major source of emergent pandemics, including Covid 19, with dangers from the poor (and very rich) driving bushmeat markets. Unsafe and unnatural farming practices contribute to the danger as seen with BSE and new version Jacob-Creutzfeldt disease as well as influenza strains derived from pigs or the poultry industry, such as H5N1. Nicotinamide deficiency allows TB to flourish and develop drug-resistance and have high death rates from many acute infections. Like a clean air and water policy it is in everyone’s interests to have clean meat or could lead to autogenocide from further pandemics that, like the 1918 flu, may not target the elderly or the poor.

3.9 Foreign aid and humanitarianism

In 1755 a massive earthquake hit Lisbon inspiring a pan-European relief effort reflecting the enlightenment and a “passion for compassion”. However, it took visionaries, transnational activists and charities such as the (American)Red Cross, Oxfam. Save the Children and Médecins sans frontieres) UN agencies and democratic governments particularly the USA to action help mainly after WW2 [118, 119]. Benefit in emergencies is without doubt but longer- term impacts have been more controversial [120].

Promises of Aid have rarely been honoured or scaled up (“billions to trillions”) by the World Bank to achieve UN Sustainable Development Goals and would need a new look in a multipolar world to support higher meat intake. The land-locked Sahel’s three dissident nations largely Francophone “coup belt” relying on food imports would be a good microcosm to consider as displaced pastoralists from climate change with both droughts and floods fight over grazing, water and mineral rights. Stresses including high birth rates leading to extreme levels of poverty, civil unrest, jihadi insurgencies and migration particularly of farmers in a “perfect storm” but currently only receiving 26 cents a day toward the basics of keeping alive and are not helped by a “hyper-presidential” military junta and “boot and gun” responses [121].

On a philosophical point humanitarianism even if it should not be relied upon could highlight unnecessary dietary deaths “ghosts” (there is no memorial to the Bengal famine) pledging the living to honour their memory. As in Lincoln’s address “these dead shall not have died in vain ….and government of the people by the people for the people shall not perish from the earth” this would encourage proper feeding of now and future generations legitimising accountable governments rather than autocratic “strongmen” less likely to promote peace [122].

3.10 Global food systems, diets, nutrition and ultra-processed junk foods

There is a welcome move away from blaming the individual for eating a poor diet to improving food environments as “Sitopias” and inclusion of the consumer in urban agriculture. A systems approach that is biophysically and technologically possible for the food supply and nutrition with an adequate family income could support otherwise unachievable dietary recommendations Figure 3 [123, 124]. The lure of cheap calories in sugars and oils in ultra-processed food (not dissimilar to the pellagra-genic slave and shareholder diet of cornbread and molasses) is increasingly recognised as a risk for disease now and for generations to come [117, 125]. The benefits of vegetarian diets are overblown at least when they are monophagic in the developing world [126].

Animal source foods are produced in a wide range of farming systems that include grazing systems, concentrated animal feeding operations, fishing and aquaculture requiring 3/4 of agricultural land and some 20% of greenhouse gas emissions (methane in particular) [127]. The aim should be to mitigate the emissions and deforestation by meatpackers companies in rainforests and savannah’s (such as Brazil’s Cerrado) helped by “Green Beef Stamps” alongside a “soy moratorium.” Farmer’s revolts, and “Nitrogen wars” could be avoided without wrecking the dairy industry even if taxation on synthetic fertilisers is needed favouring manure and friction over “rewilding” can be negotiated.

Local sustainable farming should reduce the variances of meat/milk and fish intake globally and reduce wastage [128]. International trade must not make things worse by extracting meat and fish from populations who then cannot afford to eat their own food [129]. Globally 60% of children do not eat animal source produce daily with twice as much in high income compared with middle income families with the hierarchy of meat being worse in low income countries but this can be corrected if the will is there [130]. Poor countries should not be exposed to food dumping such as high fat “mutton flaps” let alone the “double jeopardy” of bushmeat with risks of local food poisoning and a “cauldron” for global zoonotic pandemics.

3.11 Coda: hoover’s FBI’s war on breakfast clubs, Thompson’s moral economy and James and Fanon on economic oppression

“The black panther vision of a world where all children are fed where food are rights not privileges is a vision that can and should spark the food movement today” Raj Patel 2012.

The Black panther movement promoted “sit ins” in restaurants where Blacks were made unwelcome and breakfast clubs as school food initiatives did not cater adequately for disadvantaged children [131]. This provoked and extraordinary response from the FBI, who considered them an “invidious poison” and sent in the police to ransack clinics and kitchens [132, 133, 134]. Both the FBI, generally in favour of white Christian nationalism, and the Black Panther movement must have realised that nurturing the revolution has to be done first to fight oppression as have subsequent healthy food justice, (black)farming, horticultural and stockholding movements forming geographies and fields of freedom [135, 136, 137, 138].

Thompson’s “Moral Economy” had similar thoughts about the importance of food and artificial shortages. He channelled the 18th C revolts when people were scandalised that farmers were exporting, hoarding, or speculating rather than bringing food to market. Scandals now reserved to bigger organisations and financiers with smallholders often suffering the worst despite “fair trade” policies and have to fight back over their right to subsistence [139, 140]. The concept of a “just price” at times of “dearth” needs to be revisited to enable the pursuit of a decent meal and ascent on Engels curve [141].

The radical Trinidadian writer James and the Martinican psychiatrist Fanon saw racism as relating to economic oppression and lack of access to resources. By contrast the predominant modern liberal thinking is that people need to be taught that race has no legitimate basis but that it relates to vocabulary, civil rights and identity politics and is a retrainable “psychological flaw” [142, 143]. The liberal and legal approach may well have reduced inter-personal prejudice, but we would join the radicals in thinking that mass oppression (“wars on disposable humanity”) and deracination can only be alleviated through economic means and consequent reduction in dehumanisation by dietary means.

4. Part three: revision and further suggestions

“it is…in the power of medical science to diminish, and greatly so, the number of those who must otherwise be sacrificed to the pursuit of riches” James Grainger 1802 [144].

4.1 Race, class and food

The myth of Race as a scientific idea is remarkably persistent despite being debunked in the 1940’s by Montagu and later in the 1970’s and subsequently as genetic variation within races was shown to be higher than between races—and largely superficial responding to local climatic, disease or dietary context in genes un-related directly to intelligence [145, 146, 147]. There is no sure route to racial equality and histories are different. The USA slave and civil rights story differs from the UK post WW2 “Windrush” history of some half a million Caribbean working -class or west African students integrating or secular attempts in France to be “race blind” have not fully succeeded. Support for diversity yet still with persistent racial, class and poor country frictions remain unexplained and unresolved dilemmas suggesting that there is an underlying motor not previously emphasised or addressed [148]. Racism, reverse racism and anti-racism are not unfixable or immutable problems as long if there is a return to basics (rather than fashionable mantras) as improving diet is not “pie in the sky” and most importantly is an equality policy that worked in the case of pellagra.

A Crimson thread of meat hierarchies obscured in a “hall of mirrors” but hiding in plain sight runs through the dark (rather than “better angels”) side of human history and influenced what it means to be accepted as a civilised human. Poor meat intake (not a part of our evolution) causes micronutrient loss not only of nicotinamide but also iron and methyl donors including choline and vitamin B12 important to brain health—meat to many on the margins literally being worth its weight in gold. Pellagra (and allied Kwashiorkor and “environmental enteropathy”) is the tip of an iceberg that causes subtle dehumanisation and apparent inferior peoples [149, 150]. The importance of a balanced diet has been down-played, misinterpreted or used (sometimes consciously sometimes by mistake) to subjugate people or to exterminate them by invoking different intelligence and uncivilised behaviour [151, 152]. Blaming hierarchical “toxic or post-slavery stress” for class dependant disease (particularly as some structure and division of labour relieves stress) is an unprovable distraction that at best may be compounding dietary induced methylation gaps [153, 154, 155].

Feeding the poor with more and more empty calories is not the answer [156, 157]. The experience in India records 140 million unnecessary deaths alongside astonishing levels of childhood stunting and malnutrition mainly in the lower castes or migrants. Some states in such as Kerala have progressive policies (such as midday meals and scant condemnation of meat eaters) proven to work on health (e.g. less TB) and wealth in double-blind trials [158, 159, 160]. Grain in other states is hoarded and India is a major exporter of food including beef and possesses nuclear weaponry suggesting that a course correction is necessary.

4.2 Nothing new under the sun: one race, the human race

Thought leaders from Condorcet and Paine through to the Jacobin “sans culottes” argued for “les subsistence’s” i.e. the right to live on varied and plentiful food as did Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations. French and American revolutions and then Roosevelt’s“4 Freedoms” and “New Deals” on to Welfare reforms have intermittently argued that sufficient living conditions and the biopolitics of health should take precedence over other human rights “Necessitous men are not free men”. Good diet might be more likely to solve inequality for individuals and “identity” groups who have often been pandered to by immediate voter concerns rather than longer term health and happiness or economic gain [161, 162, 163]. Adequate meat should be part of a dietary and basic Human Right and not ducked so easily, even by pressure for late life care or defence of the realm, but requires reform and wealth diversion if economies are not to languish [164, 165, 166]. Ignoring such solutions globally makes us less than innocent bystanders and complicit with “out of sight/out of mind” crimes that we criticise others for (such as Nazi) supporters [105].

Many features of inequality may find themselves solved by a nutritionally “sufficientarian” state without needing full equality, as there may be a ceiling effect, so may be cheap and do-able if the profit motive is lessened in favour of public health [167, 168]. Countries should continue to develop national food policies and “Eatwell plates” with all 5 plates represented. Global recommendations that ignore in-affordability or poor access in “food deserts” should be helped by cash. Nutritional and precision disease data, including on diarrhoea (a feature of pellagra) down to village or individual level with metabolic data would highlight the problems and target relief helped by developing NAD related screening [169]. This is not solely a matter of human decency and empathy or compassion, (the Ultimatum game suggests we can play fair [170]) but because these unsafe meat variances are an existential danger.

This danger is a predictable and multi-faceted risk whether from local violence to terrorism to mass migrations or zoonotic pandemics or food poisoning or by encouraging microbial resistance. “Superbugs” are estimated to kill 10 million a year by 2050 in a “silent epidemic” and is closely linked to animal husbandry and use of antibiotics to increase growth. A “One-Health” approach with the help of veterinarians includes vaccination programmes and early warning of potential zoonoses [171]. The famous debate between “the technological Wizard” (Borlaug) having all the answers versus the population and ecologically concerned Prophet (Vogt) dissolves as better technologically aided diets create high quality populations [172].

4.3 Tried and tested: land reform

Asian successes with land and farm reforms and support for pastoralists are models- (most pastureland is not suitable for crops) and with silviculture can be carbon neutral. Similarly controls of fishing and aquaculture can improve diet but also be sustainable by carbon-sinking (such as by whales). Economic success comes from several telling examples following the lead of Mc Arthur’s “land to the tiller” in Japan and by “Asian Tigers” such as Taiwan and South Korea (democracy does not need to come first) conforming to Rostow’s 1960 rules on development and Lipton’s dictum—“if you wish for industrialisation, prepare to develop agriculture”. By-passing agriculture, as found by communist regimes rather than using indigenous knowledge and the cheap labour of family farming and gardening with livestock does not work [173]. Plans to over-ride local developments by discouraging agrarian competitors that compete with “Big Ag” should be discouraged [174].

The economists may have ignored the beneficial effects of diet The developing world needs to be protected, as was the developed world to begin with, from needing to use produce as cash crops in a free trading laissez- faire system (that is far more extreme than Ricardian comparative advantage “Trading cloth for wine”) before it feeds its own people. “Bantustans” mimicking Hong-Kong or Singapore jumping to finance and service economies will not be a common solution and only works if the profits are re-invested in a democratised food supply. Traditional subsistence gardening and smallholder “la via Campesina” food sovereignty and international peasant movements with scientific advances in collaboration with “Big Ag” are needed [175].

4.4 Grounds for optimism in the last chance saloon

Despite much publicity and energy decrying white privilege and other forms of identity politics tolerance of others is improving persons who have a choice may now even decide to ‘pass’ as ethnic minorities. Ironing out dietary disadvantages both across and within countries will help—or at least move societies on to another more humanistic and safer chapter and counteract tendencies toward “(Afro)-pessimism” breaking bonds with the south [176, 177]. Many food riots have succeeded despite the rioters being weakened by poor diet and dents are clear in the beliefs of white superiority initially made by wars (such as Pearl Harbour) and despite much racism some sports. Boxers, jockeys and later rugby and cricket players broke barriers and enabled anti-apartheid protests as did music and in turn also helped the case for women and the disabled (such as the para-Olympics) showing that individuals can overcome poor circumstances even as groups suffer [178].

Breaking Engel’s law by excessive poverty making meat and milk unaffordable at the same time as increasing exposure to “empty calorification” with cheap (industrial) sugars and oils in “Ultra-processed Junk foods” has led to not only malnutrition but obesity and diabetes in all countries as “commercial” determinants of health—and is another form of subjugation by the healthier rich on their “flexitarian” diets [169, 179, 180, 181, 182]. Optimism comes from this now becoming recognised and of knowing that not acting risks repetitions of previous reversions to rather similar famine foods and food adulteration often using advertising methods or price to target children [183, 184, 185]. The economic and practical case for transforming food systems now includes digitally informed climate advice for the grower and targeted application of treatments from water to fungicides is compelling given the 5–10 trillion USD advantages to global GDP. The current cost of human suffering and planetary harm is above 10 trillion USD a year so our food systems destroy more value than they create. Admittedly the sheer number of stakeholders becomes a barrier to change but poorer countries will not catch up automatically, as there is no such thing as “unconditional convergence”. Public health must take precedence as when profit is the main motive farmers, and consumers are in a weak position to influence food supply chains Figure 4 [186].

Figure 4.

Improving diet and abolishing malnutrition would cost remarkably little given peace and health dividends and have benefits that include other Millenium and sustainable developmental goals.

Optimism also comes from reading “Big Histories” on the rise and fall of civilizations describing the anatomy and geography of success. Interactive effects of climate change, manmade ecocidal disasters, war, and “tragedy of the commons” with extractive and expropriative economies have all repeatedly caused trouble but we have been warned. Histories underplay the role of diet and meat but the aspirational classes have intuitively long known owning quality land with access to water is a good place to be. Some historians have realised as high infant mortality was used to predict the fall of the Soviet Union [187, 188]. From the earliest civilisations (3000 BC) “meat elites” ruled until soil degradation defeated them. Good examples come from Assyria and from interconnected failures around 1177 BC and the dust bowls in Oklahoma of the 1930’s, since repeated such as the Aral sea with much malnutrition, dehumanisation forced migrations and wrath as a result. We live in an NAD-world and could correct metabolic imbalances alongside dangers from green-house gases with a requirement to form a fairer “Eco-Economy” [189, 190, 191].

5. Conclusion

As Martin Luther-King and Toni Morrison said racism and other forms of suppression that include ancient ethnic, or religious or tribal hatreds may be a distraction. Measuring and correcting our metabolic commonality to be fairer with economic emancipation may avoid social outbursts and further zoonotic pandemics. Future charges of manslaughter and genocide could be laid at our door from a failure to provide a universal dietary and NAD baseline protecting individuals, especially dependent children, from harm no matter where they live. Correcting malnutrition would be cost-effective and solve many other unfilled UN promises and Millenium development goals (such as reductions in TB and better educational and economic outcomes [192, 193]. Multilevel evolution allows us to rise above individual or vested interest groups and national politics to think as a species or indeed as a cooperative multi-species with biodiverse flora and fauna. By concentrating on early development and importing the landscape of brain health, when cost-effectiveness is at its highest, and producing quality over quantity populations with super-agers we could move from the Anthropocene to a cleverer and sustainable “Sapiezoic” Era [194, 195].

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.