[Gem]

Originally Posted by Tobi

I get what you mean, Gem
But who knows for sure if veganism/vegetarianism would harm the body-systems of tribal people? It may be detrimental to their culture and traditions....but would it harm their physical health?

I'm imagining if you took the fish out of the diet of island peoples they would have malnutrition.

Because of where they live and the options available to them then such people have no choice than to hunt and fish for a living. If they suddenly had options, and (theoretically) adopted a good balanced vegan diet, with all necessary nutrients, we can't really say without lifetime studies, how that would affect them physically.

That doesn;t happen, and island peoples who are 'given options' (meaning made to pay for imported food) don't actually 'choose' vegan diets. In fact, their traditional diets are replaces with the cheap stuff they afford. Rice, flour, sugar, tea and fatty canned meats.

I don't really see veganism/vegetarianism as exclusively a 'middle-class white-man's' eating fad, or any politically/culturally-motivated domination agenda....
Many Indian people are vegan/vegetarian.

They have religious/cultural reasons and that's fine, it doesn't make them more better than a Pacific islander fisherman or a desert nomadic person. It just means they clear a lot of forest to create agriculture.

Veg does have sensible and ethical reason, so I'm nor going against it, but merely pointing out that ethics are not 'right'. Ethics is a dilemma.

For example. Lets say we come across an ethic group that lives in a forest, but they do little to no agriculture. For 10 thousand years they hunted and gather and led reasonably healthy lives. Then the great white/indian moralist comes and teaches them to not kill animals for food, but instead, clear the land for crops and take water from the streams for irrigation. As a result there is habitat destruction, soil erosion, and even species extintion. With less habitat to provide for them, the people become more reliant on their agriculture and continue the practice of deforestation to grow crops. Soon enough they forget hoe to hunt and gather, there are less jungle species available and they become completely reliant on their own toil to produce this vegan diet, but to the destruction of their culture their forest and their and knowledge. Morals are simple: don't kill, but ethics are complicated because something has to be killed one way or another, and that includes more than the lives of animals.