IN REPLY to Ian Cummings’ letter (ViewPoints, November 15) regarding a vegan diet, in which I’m taken to task for saying that this is only possible for the affluent – perhaps I should have said affluent countries, since it seems unlikely that people in the Third World would be in a position to control their diet in a manner that made it possible for a vegan system to work.

My letter on this subject had the last point edited out. What I was trying to say was that those who switched from a meat diet to farmed crops, based on the grasses, found that they suffered a degree of intolerance to them.

I did mention barley and wheat since they are the ones that most affect people in this country, although I believe some people are intolerant to all of the annual cereal grasses such as maize, rice, sorghum, millet, oats, rye and a few more.

Nearly all the varieties of these plants are modern cultivars that have been developed over the last 5,000 years and are used as a necessary part of a vegan’s diet.

This is the way nature works. Animals evolve to eat vegetation and others prey on the animals. This pressure drives evolution and keeps animal numbers under control. The trouble with humans is that we eat and waste far too great a quantity of animal products, caused, in part, by supermarkets trying to sell cheaper and cheaper meat.

DERRICK HOLT, Fortnam Close, Headington