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Was your old local leftist lady old enough to remember the days when pellagra was a serious problem in the South? Wikipedia says it was widespread until World War 2 - and of course having meat in one's diet prevents the nutrient deficiency that causes it.
(And to return to the "we've recently become so much wealthier" theme, isn't it astounding that less than a century ago the southern states were so poor many people had to spend part/all of the year living on corn alone?)
Pellagra in the South was ended mostly via fortification.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1446222/
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He's Finnish, so I doubt it has much to do with Southern US nutrient deficiencies(where, as with all Southern US problems, one must first control for race- the black population lived in third world level poverty for a long time when we were wealthy enough as a society that it didn't need to be).
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