The Press TUESDAY, JULY 18, 1939. National Malnutrition

Press, Volume LXXV, Issue 22765, 18 July 1939, Page 8

The Press TUESDAY, JULY 18, 1939. National Malnutrition

Speaking in the House of Lords last week, the former Secretary of the Committee for Imperial Defence, Lord Hankey, reminded his hearers of the staggeringly high rate of unfitness' among army recruits some years ago and, while acknowledging the satisfactory improvement in the present militia figures, insisted that “the “ number of persons unfit, of all ages, was still “ disturbing—because of malnutrition in most “ cases.” He urged the Government to adopt the League of Nation’s Report on Nutrition (1937) as the basis of a policy. For two excellent reasons Lord Hankey’s remarks are of interest in New Zealand. First, there is no doubt at all that the Dominion, too, is paying a heavy price, in physical unfitness and in the cost of treating disease, for nutritional, errors. Second, New Zealand stands to gain immediately, if the British Government decides on measures to ensure the proper feeding of the population. Four years ago Mr Stanley Bruce, in a phrase of great significance, called upon the Council of the League of Nations to work for “ the marriage of agriculture to public “ health.” He was fighting against the feat 6 of such a fall in the price of farm products as had occurred in the preceding years; he was fighting against the dangerous theory of “ over-produc- “ tion ”; and he was fighting for the health of man, woman, and child, which requires not merely “ enough to eat,” in the conventional sense, but enough of the essential things to eat. In the same year, 1935, Sir John Orr exposed the difference between these two standards of sufficiency when he published his startling calculation that about 20,000,000 of the population of Britain were living on a diet inadequate for health, mainly because they were short of the income necessary to purchase the essential variety of foodstuffs, particularly the “ protective” foodstuffs. No subsequent inquiry has upset the basis of Sir John Orr’s conclusions. Several surveys, in fact, have substantiated them and illuminated them with specific data; and a number of them<have produced important but disturbing results in the field of malnutrition among children. The most disturbing result, perhaps, is the discovery that much of the existing evidence is fallacious, because the standards applied have been shifting and uncertain and the methods of examination not thorough enough. Dr. J. C. Spence, for example, after making some unusually careful examinations of the ordinary type, checked them by laboratory tests and found that he had classified under “ good and satisfactory “ general condition ” five children suffering from marked anaemia; and among 59 classified as “ moderate ” or “ average ” he found three cases of rickets .and 12 of anaemia. An observer in a depressed area in Wales classified 91.7 per cent, of the children as “ good,” 8.3 per centl as “fair,” finding not one “bad”; yet 43 per cent, were under the “normal” weight and 30 per cent, under the “ normal ” height for - their age. The figures for malnutrition among New Zealand school children must fall under the same sort of suspicion. The physical examinations conducted have served a good purpose, well, it is rightly acknowledged; but , that they have led to complete and completely reliable results is not to' be believed. But complete and completely reliable results are worth obtaining. They promise much towards the foundation of a national health policy of infinitely greater value than schemes for the free treatment of sickness and disease. New Zealand does not, perhaps, ifurnish for the sociologist such statistics as are quoted by the Director, of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, Mr N. F. Hall, who has pointed out that “ prosperous ” districts in Great Britain have a corrected death-rate 30 pej cent, lower than the national average, while poorer districts show a figure 40 per cent, higher. The more even distribution of wealth in the Dominion saves the statistician from having to record such sad evidences' of social disorder; but it does not save him from having to record, in prodigious and increasing hospital expenditure, for instance, disturbing evidence of faulty living. When the New Zealand branch of the British Medical Association first began to publish its critical objections to the Government’s health scheme, it declared that a sound scheme should emphasise and develop the preventive side of medical work. This was true and of the highest importance; and it is to be regretted no less that the profession has failed to press this argument and formulate proposals accordingly than that the Government still stubbornly puts the financing of treatment and cure before the nurture of a healthy people.

As for the industrial importance to New Zealand of a major advance of British policy towards the proper feeding of the nation, this only needs to be said. Sir John Orr calculated that to bring the diet of all sections to a scientifically adequate standard, £200,000,000 a year more would have to be spent on food. A con siderable part of this would be spent on homeproduced fruit, vegetables, and dairy produce, particularly whole milk. But part, and probably a greater part, would be spent oversea. New Zealand’s dairy farmers and meat producers would see again the prospect of a widening British market. No other factor seems likely to' open it so wide, or to open it at all.