The importance of nutrition has a lifecycle as long as human existence. It affects all ages and all the world’s populations. Humanity also shares the threat of malnutrition, which is definitely not confined–as it is so often presumed–to Third World countries.

Good nutrition starts before birth, since deficiencies in a mother’s diet can pass to the child in the form of serious birth defects such as blindness (lack of vitamin A) and developmental defects (lack of vitamin B). After birth, the first serious cause of malnutrition is formula feeding. Human breast milk is perfectly balanced to meet the nutritional needs of infants.

Proper nutrition is most important during children’s early growth years, during pregnancy and old age. Elderly people are at increased risk for under-nutrition as they are more prone to wear dentures, which makes it more difficult to eat raw foods; they often live alone and are more likely to be depressed and poor. Consequently, they often eat an overly processed diet much higher in fats and sugar.

Traditional Societies

Canadian First Nations peoples, Australian aborigines and other traditional societies have suffered terribly from a decline in nutrition since colonization. Their displacement by cash-crop agriculture and industrialization has reduced their traditional hunting and fishing areas or forced them into subsistence farming on marginal land.

Canadian First Nations have additional challenges because many plants and animals they depend on have been vastly decreased, contaminated by industrial or agricultural pollution or made inaccessible by settlement in reserves. Consumption of essential fatty acids in fish and marine mammals helps protect many natives against heart disease, but this food source increasingly contains toxins such as methyl mercury, organochlorines and fluorides. Waterfowl are often contaminated by lead that accumulates in lake sediments from ammunition or pollution.

High levels of diabetes plague First Nations peoples on reserves due to lack of breast feeding, poor diet and obesity, compounded by a sedentary lifestyle.

Nutrition and the World’s Poor

The world’s urban poor are often those displaced from traditional societies who now scrape by on the fringes of large cities. They have been separated from their traditional foods and knowledge and do not have the resources or education to manage a new urban environment.

Whole-food interventions can make a substantial difference. In Sudan, children’s consumption of tomatoes, rich in antioxidants, vitamins and minerals, has significantly reduced mortality. In Vietnam, consumption of the local fruit momordica has resulted in higher serum levels of vitamin A and hemoglobin.

Simple interventions can make a big difference. A study among urban poor near Durban, South Africa, found that small garden plots improved beta-carotene intake in all children, even those not included in the study, because excess production of fruits and vegetables quickly made its way into local markets.

Solutions are not so easy for war refugees without access to enough fresh food and where foreign aid provides only calories and basic food groups, not many micronutrients.

Nutrition and the Rich

David Crowe is a Calgary-based environmentalist who analyzes the scientific justification for modern medicine. He has a BSc in biology and mathematics. He can be reached at David.Crowe@aras.ab.ca.

Source: alive #245, March 2003