Colonial arrogance, ignorance, racism and greed

led to the bullshit that Western animal diets and animal protein are superior to African plant-based diets and plant protein.

In a discussion between a ‘carnivore’ doctor and a vegan doctor the carnivore doctor cited a 1931 preliminary report (not a peer review) by some British colonialists, one of whom (Orr) worked for the Milk Marketing board, was keen to find markets for surplus dairy and was ‘vocal in regarding the vegetarianism movement in Britain as faddish’. I was inspired to look up this report.

The report allegedly indicated that there were improved outcomes of physique (the report gives great importance to height; though it is irrelevant to health), less bronchitis, intestinal disorders and ‘tropical ulcers’ (a skin condition) in the Masai tribe (Masai have short life spans, the women tend to be more plant-based and 80% of the Masai men in the study suffered from constipation and arthritis) than in the Kikuyu tribe. The Masai allegedly ate mostly meat, milk and blood, but also tubers, honey and foraged plants. The Kikuyu were more agricultural and supposedly ate mostly cereals, now known to also include sweet potatoes and plantains.

There are two glaring things that were ignored.

1. The Kikuyu men were labourers forced to work to pay taxes for the privilege of living on their own land, who were given rations of porridge made from maize, not their traditional crop but rather introduced by the British, which they didn’t like. The Masai were not labourers, having more resources to pay the taxes.

2. The most striking difference in health was between the women and the men. The mostly plant-based women had much less tropical ulcers as they ate plenty of greens. The Kikuyu women also consumed no milk from puberty to menopause and had better fertility, live births and infant survival rates than the Masai women.

Instead of observing that the plant based diet, with no milk, of the Kikuyu women was totally nutritious and had better outcomes and recommending to Masai women that they avoid milk and to Kikuyu men that they consume the easily accessible greens; the researchers tried to flog Kikuyu men milk products and to teach the women domestic science. The British continued to ignore their own influence on health of rationing an inadequate diet as well as the effects of colonialism itself on Africans.

(This misleading propaganda has continued with ‘bioavailability’ studies supposedly showing that animal protein is more easily absorbed than plant. However, these abusive experiments are done on rodents and pigs; who are not human and use raw food; no-one eats raw beans folks)

From a 1997 paper by Cynthia Brantley;

When the study's conclusions were read more widely, they led to pervasive misunderstanding of vegetarian diets. A fuller investigation of this Maasai/Kikuyu study reveals the limitations of the science and the influence of the prejudice of the times. It becomes clear in a deconstruction of the reports that investigators found what they wanted to find, that their greater concerns remained with Britain's own health needs, and that both the pre-research report in Lancet[8] and the final published report worked effectively as propaganda pieces to show the deficiencies of vegetarianism, the benefits of milk, and the economic advantages to Britain of having both healthy labourers and improved African agricultural practices. The problems of the study and the impact of its investigations on a wider understanding of rural African diet have remained buried.

For Africa generally this study had a far-reaching influence, as much from its findings of malnutrition as from Orr's continued work on nutritional committees which addressed African issues. Separately yet simultaneously, J. M. McCulloch, a medical officer in Nigeria, undertook another dietary investigation. He wrote his report at the Rowett, and came to some of the same conclusions concerning the value of milk and the problems of a vegetable diet, thereby extending the general picture to West Africa.

With this report, the attribution of a condition of undernutrition to all vegetarian colonial peoples was complete. Here, as Worboys argues so effectively, the problem was ascribed to the ignorance and poverty of the Africans, an interpretation that belied the ample evidence that colonial conditions had contributed to nutritional problems.

Unfortunately, despite its subsequent influence, the limitations, exaggerations and obscured observations of the original Orr and Gilks study have never been revealed, and in new times with new knowledge, the findings were never re-evaluated. On the contrary, the oversimplified cheering for the benefits of milk and meat sounded louder. Moreover, despite the promise and potential, even from the preliminary and confusing findings, there was almost no direct benefit from the study to Kenya or to the Africans who lived there. It is important to understand why.

The erroneous belief, established by McCollum in the U.S.A. in 1925, that "no known combination of grains alone can support growth and reproduction" conditioned all aspects of the Orr and Gilks study. Just prior to this time, Britain, which had never produced sufficient grain to feed the British population, but rather had a surplus of milk and meat, had come to rely increasingly on animal protein.

So the Orr and Gilks study was launched within this direct and obvious League of Nations concern about worldwide nutritional problems. On the basis of colonial stereotypes, one would have expected that the quality of the diets and the health of individuals in the categories consuming them to rank in the following order: Maasai men, Maasai women, Kikuyu men and Kikuyu women. In fact what Foster found was that Maasai warriors reflected the best physique and best overall health(though without acknowledging non-nutritional factors such genetic differences and the impact of back breaking labouring), but the next group in terms of health was Kikuyu women (though they did not exceed their own men in height, weight, or strength). Their diet was substantially more nutritious than that of Kikuyu men. Maasai warriors then, provided the standard of overall general health and physique. (They were just slightly shorter and about twelve pounds lighter than British males). Maasai women showed a general picture of good health and physique, but some of them, in great contrast to Kikuyu women, were susceptible to sterility and had problems with lactation. Overall, Kikuyu males manifested the poorest health but they were also the most likely to be living on work rations primarily of maize meal posho.

Kikuyu and Maasai women differed strikingly in frequency of pregnancy, health during pregnancy, birth of healthy babies, and timely, adequate lactation to support infant survival. Maasai women had significant problems while Kikuyu women did not, and it was well known that many Maasai men had taken Kikuyu wives over the years specifically because of these differences in childbearing and child survival. What accounted for the differences was less clear.

In contrast to Masai women, Kikuyu women had successful pregnancies although they specifically did not drink milk during their childbearing years for fear it would hamper reproduction. This certainly called into question the presumed benefits of a milk and meat diet versus a vegetarian one.

The colonial practices of confining both Maasai and Kikuyu to reserves and supplying an insufficient diet to predominantly male Kikuyu laborers were never questioned. Certainly, by overlooking the vast variation found among the diets of men and women respectively, and the important distinctions between the diets of adults and children, the findings were oversimplified to stress perceived categorical differences between male and female diets, between "tribal" diets, and between pastoral and agricultural diets. Initial, already problematic generalizations about specific ostensibly tribal Kikuyu or Maasai diets were extended by subsequent researchers into generalizations about virtually all agricultural African diets, and finally used to give scientific authority to the higher value placed on animal protein diets versus vegetarian ones by colonial observers for independent cultural reasons. "Perhaps, the pastoral Maasai were healthier than the agricultural Kikuyu because their way of life was less affected by European penetration?"

The British were recognizing no responsibility on their part for reduced Kikuyu dietary quality, yet, as Worboys has argued, plenty of evidence emerged during the thirties to make clear that the nutritional problems being discovered were both "recent" and partly the fault of colonial policies and the colonial condition

Since its positive findings about vegetarian diets were hidden, they were ignored. Ironically, early discoveries about specific deficiencies had indirectly been correlated with the perils of westernization: beri-beri could be cured among peoples eating polished rice by reintroducing the thiamin that had been removed in the polishing process. Orr certainly wanted to deny that refined foods were the problem; he accomplished that in this study by ignoring the implications of posho as a colonial version of African diet. As the importance of legumes in the old diet had been ignored in the rush to encourage Kikuyu to grow maize this distorted the findings of the Orr and Gilks study even more. Even so, the study had the indirect impact of elevating evaluations of western diets and denigrating indigenous African diets.

From me;

Now dangerous and ignorant people promoting ‘carnivore’ diets are citing this biased report from 1931 as though it was science.

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