MALNUTRITION PROBLEM

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22210, 10 September 1935, Page 14

MALNUTRITION PROBLEM

DANGER TO NEW ZEALAND MORAL AND SOCIAL EVILS Failure to deal with the problem of malnutrition immediately would brand New Zealand as a nation of fools, stated Professor W. H. Gould, of Victoria College, in the course of an address at a meeting convened by tho Unemployment Research Committee in Wellington. Professor Gould explained that the application of the word malnutrition did not always mean the same thing. Official statistics dealing with malnutrition recorded that there had been a drop in the number of reported cases from 7.06 in 1929 to 5.64 in 1934, and it was held that what malnutrition did exist was due to unintelligent parents who were ignorant of the principles of dietetics. While he was unwilling to credit either the Minister of Health or the statistician with deliberate falsification, he was sceptical as to their conclusions. It seemed that there was a technical as well as a popular meaning of the term malnutrition. The popular meanwas under-nourishment due to insufficiency of food: hut on looking up the latest medical dictionary he discovered that tho meaning of the word was "faulty nutrition due to tnalassimilation," so that malnutrition could be just as prevalent among the over-fed as the under-fed The only inference to bo drawn from tho continued prevalence of undernourishment, said Professor Gould, was that the percentage of mental defectives, and, in consequence, moral and social defectives, would be greatly increased by failure to shoulder the responsibility. Following that would be a great increase in general hospitals, mental hospitals and reformative institutions.