Public Attention to Nutrition of Children
The importance of the whole problem of nutrition can be made clear by quoting from the work of a specialist. The paragraphs selected are the more impressive because they show that other nations as well as ourselves are confronted by these problems.
Recently there has been an increasing tendency to make the report on nutrition of different children the basis of the entire medical-inspection report. This is because it has been demonstrated again and again that the occurrence of disease and physical defects is largely conditioned by nutritional disturbances.
In Paris medical inspectors have charge of the school canteens and are required to report on the nutrition of each child. They are further expected to follow up any child with impaired nutrition and to administer tonics and special care.
In England, since 1907, compulsory medical inspection has included inspection of nutrition. Beginning with 1909, the chief medical officer of the National Board of Education has reported yearly on the nutrition of the children throughout the country and on the work of the school feeding centers. In Scotland the medical inspectors are required to see that children suffering from malnutrition are fed properly either by the school or by the parents. As a result of this systematic work British school doctors are developing methods of technique and standards for judging malnutrition, which, on account of its complex and interwoven causes, is very difficult to estimate accurately....
In American cities no record of the nutrition of the entire school population has been made. In 1907 in New York the Committee on Physical Welfare of School-Children reported 13 per cent of 990 children, selected as typical of the whole city, to be suffering from malnutrition. A similar investigation of 10,090 children in Chicago in 1908 revealed 12 per cent badly nourished in all grades, the proportion decreasing from 15 per cent in the kindergarten to 6 per cent in the fifth grade and above. Wherever an attempt has been made to include all classes of children in the examinations, the percentages found suffering from acute malnutrition run from 10 to 15. Where only schools in the poorer districts are included, the percentages are far higher, and vary between 20 and 40. However, it must be remembered that children from the poorer districts far outnumber those in other schools, so that in point of figures the actual proportion of children suffering from malnutrition is probably nearer the second estimate. Doctor Thomas F. Wood, of Columbia, gives 25 per cent as the estimate for the school population of the whole country.
“The longer a medical officer remains at school inspection,” remarks Doctor Hope, of Liverpool, in a report for 1912, “the more severe becomes his standard of nutrition, and the less readily does he pass a child as being well nourished.”[89]
One reason that health conditions in rural schools have been so long neglected is because of the common idea that country children are naturally vigorous and healthy. “This ought to be so but unfortunately is not,” says Doctor Ernest Hoag, in a recent government report. He finds that, “in general, food is not as well prepared in the country as it is in the city; the available variety is smaller.” Bad methods of ventilation and heating at home and at school, exposure to wet in the long walks to school, and overdressing in the house—all are inroads on the already badly nourished bodies. Investigations show that malnutrition and its accompanying diseases are quite as frequent among country as among city children.[90]