Ok, this:

"My first message claimed you used those less fortunate that may not have the access/option to eat plant based as a justification for why the majority of people, who do have the option to eat plant based continue to eat animals."

If you are so fortunate that you think that only a minority of people are so poor that they don't have much choice about what to eat, you're the one who is out of touch.

I'm familiar with all the arguments you make and they sound good. I know that veganism is not just a diet, it's a way of life. If you can make it work for you, that's great. But if you're lucky enough to be in a place to think that the majority has never had to deal with real hunger, you have no business judging the rest of the world.

The original article is by a Native woman describing the situation in poor countries, and about her friend who had to run for his life and eat whatever he could get. She said, don't judge people in poor areas for relying on their traditional diets or on whatever they can get. My comment, in support of her point, was to the effect that even here in the USA there are poor people who don't have much choice, and those who do have a lot of choice have no business judging those who don't. I am one of those who don't have much choice. And you're saying I'm using their situation as an excuse for the "majority of people" who do have a lot of choice.

No. 86% of the world's population lives in developing countries. In the developing world, traditional diets include meat that they raise or hunt themselves. These people -- not those of us fortunate to live in the West -- are the majority. These people love their animals, and they eat them. This is part of their way of life.

Here in the West we take food for granted. Not so in the rest of the world. In Haiti they eat mud-cakes when they can't get anything else. In many parts of the world, rats and termites and snakes are food. I've seen dried crickets and caterpillars in ethnic groceries here in the USA -- I hear they taste like shrimp. Hunger is a great sauce.

During the Cold War I feared that a nuclear apocalypse was imminent, so I lived as an expat in Jamaica for a while. I was staying with a local family and there was the time my host family killed and processed a dozen chickens to bring to market. I'm not a freeloader so I helped with that. At some point my money ran out. We had a bean crop, most of it had to go to market. After threshing that crop, we crawled on the dirt floor of the shed, picking up the beans that remained there so that we could eat. I crawled and picked up beans with them. They had a bit of saltfish which they put in the pot with the beans and I ate that too because I was hungry like they were.

I had never been hungry like that before, but in most of the world, hunger is part of life. Their traditional diets include meat when they can get it, and they eat it with thanks and blessings. Most people in the West have never been hungry like that, yet even here in the USA, 10% of the population goes to bed hungry. I have.

I don't like the idea of killing animals for food, and my diet is about 80% plant based. I've tried a few times to be vegan -- I know it's a way of life, not just a diet. Each time I've found myself very ill.

I almost miscarried my daughter, trying to be vegan while pregnant. My pregnancy was ill-timed and against my will. I was alone, aching and puking all the time, unable to work or go to school, and I felt that my life was over. Then when my daughter came she suffered from failure to thrive because my milk was weak. I was reported to Child Protective Services. The caseworker saw that I was in a very bad way, a single parent all alone and suffering from post partum depression and malnutrition.

The caseworker asked me if there was anyone in the neighborhood who did infant care. There was, a sweet and brilliant elder Black lady everyone called "Mawmaw." The caseworker encouraged me to let Mawmaw take care of my daughter and to go back to school. Mawmaw fed my daughter good "Soul" food -- that's what they call the traditional African-American diet -- and she thrived.

Mawmaw cooked in big pots, and in the evening when the mothers came to pick up their kids, she fed us, too. She led us in prayer, thanks and blessings over the food, and then we ate. I ate whatever she offered me, What else could I do? Food is life. My vegan diet had me hungry all the time and it's rude to refuse a gift. Mawmaw saved my daughter's life, and mine too. I regained strength, overcame depression, got my degree, and turned my life around. While I'm not exactly thriving -- being autistic doesn't pay too good -- I'm no longer homeless and ill. My daughter is now 40, in the Air Force, and doing fine. (I don't like the military but it's her life and her choice.)

When I visited a Reservation for an extended time to help with their land struggle against Peabody Coal, I saw how the people lived. I lived that way also. No electricity. No phones. A few ancient cars running on duct tape and prayer. We carried water in 50 gallon barrels from a community well about 10 miles away, and filled a bucket from that barrel to keep in the house. Heat was from an old fashioned cast iron wood stove.

We hauled water, chopped wood, and walked miles a day herding sheep. We needed real food to do all that. The nearest grocery was 100 miles away and people went a few times a year. The people had sacks of flour, sugar, salt, coffee, beans, etc, in their sheds, and a cat to keep the mice out of it. Some people gardened but the Reservations are generally on the poorest desert land and there isn't much you can grow there.

On special occasions they would kill a sheep and everybody would eat good for a day or two. The rest of the time it was beans and homemade flatbread, seasoned with salt and local herbs and peppers and berries. Sometimes an egg or canned sardines on the side, or a little Spam or Vienna sausages or homemade sheep jerky in the beans. What else could we do? It's real food and it kept us going. And it tasted great.

That's how Indigenous people live, right here in the USA, Canada, Central and South America and the nearby islands. as well as in the rest of the world.

@Your NativeFriend, the writer of the article we are discussing, is Indigenous. She knows well of the situation I describe, and speaks from that point of view. I support her point of view because I've seen and tasted it for myself.

I still don't like the idea of killing animals and have tried to be vegan again a few times. Each time the same result -- I wound up malnourished and ill. I've known a great many vegans in my time. Most don't look very healthy to me and those who do rely on specialty foods and supplements.

Veganism almost killed me and my daughter. 86% of the world doesn't have much choice about what they eat, and they're happy to eat whatever they got. I've seen real hunger with my own eyes and felt it in my own body. So I eat what I have with thanks and blessings, like all of our ancestors did, like most of the world still does.

Sorry, I haven't done a lot of paper research on paleoanthropology and so forth. My field of study is math and math education. All I really know is what I've seen, in Jamaica and on the Res. I know that what I've seen is how we all lived, prior to industrialization. How else could it have been?

If you can be vegan, more power to you. I'm not telling you that you should not be vegan. I'm just saying that those of us who have a lot of choices have no business guilt-tripping those of us in poor countries or poor areas of the USA who don't have much choice. Only God can judge.