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.