Abstract
THE Committee against Malnutrition has issued for publication a memorandum which has been sent to the Advisory Committee on Nutrition of the Ministry of Health. The Committee considers that the full application of modern advances in the knowledge of nutrition would effect a general raising of the standard of health comparable to that which followed the lessening of disease by the construction of an adequate system of public sanitation. It is necessary not only to provide food of good quality, in sufficient amounts, but also to ensure the correct relation between the component foodstuffs. This can only be done by allowing an appreciable margin over any minimum standard hitherto formulated: the Committee considers that there is evidence that many lowly paid and unemployed families cannot purchase enough food to allow such a margin. The purchase of foodstuffs of special value will be at the expense of the cheaper energy-producing foodstuffs; dietary studies have shown that the change over to vitamin-rich food takes place automatically with increasing income. The addition of vitamin concentrates to the diet is deprecated. The Committee recommends that the precise food values of commercial preparations should be published by the Advisory Committee on Nutrition of the Ministry of Health, and that processing and dyeing foodstuffs should be prohibited. The view is put forward that all school children should receive half a pint of milk a day and nursing and expectant mothers at least one pint, with a scale of charges on a fair income basis. The Committee also expresses the opinion that the notion of minimum diets should be condemned.
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Committee Against Malnutrition. Nature 136, 97 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/136097a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/136097a0