**17. Omnivore's dilemma or dialectic?**

Thus, we have contradictory views on meat – is it our maker or breaker? The argument against meat is aimed at those who eat and waste a lot but relatively little discourse is about the needs of the poor and health inequalities and their "killing fields" [205–208]. Perhaps it is less of a dilemma if it is the high variances of meat intake that are the real problem alongside the replacement of vegetables with processed cereals and their products (such as high fructose corn syrup) and that this basic inequality affecting "food for thought" is driving many of the more obvious "Syndemic" problems from zoonoses to climate change to risk of wars and much ill health at the lower end of the income scales [209]. Let us look again at Engel's Law [210].

## **18. Engel's Law: Basic niche construction**

In 2011 in Norway (GDP per person \$62000) food budget share was 10% whereas in Chad (GDP per person \$2000) the share was 52%. Poor households have to move up the income scale before the spend on starchy foods falls and the amount spent on the more elastic need for meat rises. It then can fall as the rich become "Flexitarian" in their eating habits (as suggested in Britain by George Cheyne (1733) and by Hippocrates with his "Regimens" much earlier [211].

An unfortunate modern twist, whether poor in America or Africa, is to achieve food security by spending on high fat and high sugar processed foods (or materialistic goods from cars to phones), rather than low density fruit and vegetables that used to supply some micronutrients (such as folate and flavonoids let alone psychoactive com-pounds in Victorian times when they were cheap) even when meat was unaffordable. This plays into the commercial determinants of disease in "fast food swamps" – with individuals then stigmatised for their life-style rather than the correct label of poor life circumstances [212, 213].

States have traditionally taken some interest up to point 1 providing grain but not point 2 as meat is often felt to be a hedonic "luxury" rather than having a health utility. (Henri IV was an exception in his push for "a chicken in every pot" and Papin's "New Digester" pressure cooker (1679) helped poor to cook cheap animal products). Inflation is a painful tax on low to moderate income house-holds as are many austerity measures or actual taxes on food and drink – as is sometimes proposed for meat. Many rulers, whether fascist or socialist, have even put conditions on supplying grain to useful workers and starved the "undeserving poor" or dissidents. Exceptions included the Kennedy's who pointed out "*the obscenity of conspicuous wealth amongst public squalor*" backed up by some intellectuals in a tradition from Aristotle, and glimpsed by Mill, on emphasising a basic need for a good diet before other human attributes can really take off [214–218].

States and markets often ensure the extra meat goes to the urban middle classes (or middling diets) turning Engel's Law into a political mechanism. Egypt, for example, in the 1970s imported grain for animal feed so that the richest 25% ate four times as much meat as the poorest 25% (and had form as their rulers suppressed wages after the Black Death such that there was no survivor benefit for workers diets, as was seen in most of Europe) [219].

Other societies channel meat to the rich by restricting access to wildlife that normally favour the poor but then becomes an exotic commodity food for the rich. In Samoa hunting pigeons is comparable to English aristocrats hunting deer and as in China and earlier in the West wild delicacies from the land or the high seas were only inhibited when enforced by much stricter conservation laws [220, 221].

#### **19. Preston's curvilinear curves**

Meat is an important component of any "unified growth theory" and is an achievable developmental goal. Prestons' curves suggest that some element of modernity with a low ceiling effect after which there are diminishing returns can improve longevity, health and happiness as measured, for instance, by Happy Planet indices (**Figure 3**) [222]. Low-income poverty traps and middleincome traps (the "Argentina paradox") with economic divergences may be because Engel's curves were not satisfied for enough of the people who then can not obtain college degrees [40]. Point 2 on Engel's curve should be the target to avoid the "hidden hunger" of micronutrient deficiencies [223]. As Kristof has written **"***Future generations will be baffled at our heartlessness and our indifference to suffering in impoverished countries"* [224].

#### **20. Wealth and health of nations: Lands of milk, meat and honey**

Until a reasonable proportion of the population have climbed Engel's curve either because the cost of grain and meat has fallen (due to increased productivity *Meat and Vitamin B3: Getting a Grip on Engel's Curve DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.100056*

#### **Figure 3.**

*Preston's curves show the importance of income inequality to longevity and health and happiness and chances of rising up the social elevator. These curves rapidly flatten with a low ceiling effect. Better hygiene and education or medical innovations have been considered causative agents but better diets are the more likely factor. The ceiling effect would accord with Engel's curves and would not be that hard to achieve at a low cost and with more sharing and less waste.*

in the agricultural sector or because that country can afford to import more) consumers do not have enough discretionary income and the motivation or "marginal propensity to consume." [214, 225]. Living from paycheck to paycheck with debt and little capital does not allow spend on luxury goods (that include animal secondary products) or when that is satiated services – in other words the engine of want with a modern economy and a market that appreciates new ideas, technology and institutional governance [226–228]. The rise of consumerism, such as clothes, may however, as first noted by Marshall (1890) [229] and Veblen (1899) [230], be a chief driver of climate change and is fuelled by inequality and status anxiety that might be constrained by more equality. More educated better fed "sympathetic consumers" date back to abolitionists campaigns to reduce consumption of sugar and rum and is now evident in "Fair Trade" movements aware of invisible labourers and animal rights would be the aim resuscitating environmental Kuznets curves claims [231]. Power disparities should lessen with less income inequality allowing all to live in cleaner places and move up on the Great Gatsby curve by allowing all to "Green-up" as environmentalists [232, 233].

#### **21. Declines and falls: Milk and meat famines**

This underlying process for the wealth and health of nations has in the past led to the intellectual rise of hegemonies in the positive phase – such as the classical "Axial" age that independently at 4 different Eurasian sites in the "lucky latitudes" for domesticates fostered philosophical and scientific advances [234] and falls of Empires as in Ancient Greece and Rome and Mesoamerica from environ-mental "ecocides" with damage to the soil and to diet [235–238]. Easter and other Island's "parable" collapses show the close relationship between diet, meat and ecology – eating all the birds led to eating all rats and "slash and burn" deforestation and then on a plant-based diet (as in "peak corn" in Mayan and elsewhere in post-Columbian times), boom bust demographics [239, 240]. Success or collapse can also be seen in terms of ecological succession and transfers between "r" selection and "K" selection for lower populations of higher quality that has to be driven by omnivorous diets avoiding "catabolic" and negative phases of the cycle that often follow peak inequality in states [241, 242]. Current failures to help a levelling up of under developed countries ignore the role of building human capital based first and foremost on a good diet and was not true of the Tiger economies [243–247].

#### **22. National and personal exceptionalism: myths**

The dietary "lurking variable" impact on demographic and disease transitions may have been under-played and the more superficial correlates with educational level or hygiene overplayed [248]. Education is dependent on cognitive skills (of both teachers and pupils), so a better diet must help: as well as fueling innovation. Patents correlate with their owner's parental income but not with educational opportunities so early diet could be crucial [249]. Good diet must surely be a factor in the "Flynn" effect where improvements in performance on IQ tests improves fast with improved income so cannot be genetic or due to discrimination [250, 251]. Diet may not be any more deterministic than genes but may have more predictive power over success and gene expression by diet is easier to alter than genomes.

The "Great Enrichment" of the globe that began in the Netherlands ("Embarrassment of Riches") then England is not easily explained by classical or neoclassical economics but had ideas from the well-fed "Bourgeoise" as their real "steam" power as a greater mass of people "could have a go" at innovation and invention - with better institutions and capital accumulation as secondary reinforcements to avoid intellectual "enclosures" from patents and monopolies [252, 253]. Fogel championed diet as being the prime mover with a well- nourished well paid workforce being a pre-condition for development [254–257] and has, at times, been the policy of the United Nations [258] as advised by others [259, 260]. Mechanisms that go beyond the need for calories with micronutrients create virtuous cycles: lessons on vicious cycles come from pellagra [261, 262] - affected "cotton" states still scored the lowest for social and economic well-being over 50 years later and the highest for incarceration [263].

#### **23. Less infection, lower fertility, autoimmunity, longer lives**

Better diet improves host resistance as even if not catching an infection people are less likely to die - TB and measles are good examples - as well as increasing crystallised intelligence from living longer. Not catching TB or other "Old Friends" because of better diet may contribute at least as much as better hygiene to the switch between chronic infections and auto-immune diseases so characteristic of modern states. Furthermore fertility falls, but quality of offspring improves; this being a noncoercive form of population control and age structures from dividend to drag that is a mixed blessing in some economies with see-saws between birth control and infertility clinics, but an advantage to others, many in the south such as in Nigeria where population booms are dramatic and could eclipse the population of the United States, so once again meat moderation may be best to avoid "arcs of instability" [264, 265].

#### **24. Clean, safe meat and justice**

Reducing the variances in meat (and milk, fish and shrimp) intake perhaps to a mean of around 30–50 Kg per person per annum may be the way forward through

*Meat and Vitamin B3: Getting a Grip on Engel's Curve DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.100056*

more sharing and less waste and better husbandry but is still, in essence, a power battle [266]. This meat pathway should be made cleaner and use emerging meat technologies as they become available and affordable. Risk of emergent zoonoses should be reduced. Only then would the lottery of one's life chances so related to geography, including within states, and discrimination and snobbery often based on educational achievement even if fronted by the identity politics of the day, such as skin colour reduce or at the least enter a new chapter [267, 268].

Redistributive food justice as in school meals programmes (as advocated by the Black Panthers and opposed by the FBI who understood the power of food), would deliver more "bang for the buck" than high military and security budgets or even the high healthcare costs for those in their last few years [269]. Free school meals remains a marker of deprivation in many rich countries that correlates intellectual attainment and college entry: only when a strong dietary base is satisfied would a meritocracy make sense [270, 271]. A backlash would doubtless need to be overcome as previously disadvantaged people become more assertive as seen with the Wilmington insurrection [272] (1898) or "Tulsa" riots on "Black Wall Street" (no food desert with 38 grocery stores), who stopped seeing themselves as second class citizens to the irritation of societies status quo ante [273].

### **25. Metabolism and free energy scales: Prometheus unbound**

As Stephen J. Gould said in 1981 *"Few tragedies or injustices can be more extensive than the stunting of life by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within."* Gould pointed out that intelligence like height could have high heritability within a family yet be very sensitive to poor diet in the population. Our propensity to virtue or violence may also have a lot to do with whether we are toward the top of Engel's curves and full of energy and not too worried about being displaced [274]. A metabolic and more classic liberal approach, such as of Mill and Smith, that encompasses ethical commitment to others welfare is needed [275–277]. Ultimately this may all be about flux (as noted by Heraclitus) and thermodynamics turned on it's head by use of oil. Our predicted needs are for NAD(H)-based internal (and external) energy gradients. Josiah Gibbs (1878) and followers understood that

#### **Figure 4.**

*Metabolic health and metabolic ghettoes and rifts seen from a NAD(H) perspective. Poverty may one day be defined in biochemical not sociological terms, as NAD deficient. NAD deficiency then exacerbates infections, chemical pollution, stress and poor education to which the poor are more exposed, particularly when residentially segregated.*

chemiosmotic proton motive forces in mitochondria and chloroplasts were key as free energy usage based on Hydrogen ((H) carried by NAD and stored as ATP) connects our brains to the great cycles of life on a symbiotic planet connecting photosynthesis to respiration and combustion (**Figure 4**) [278–281].
