Social Problems

Abstract

Supplies of food, the nutritive value of food, human energy and disease are all closely linked together. It is generally conceded that the peoples of the Third World are, for the most part, underfed, ill-nourished and prone to suffer from certain types of disease. One must be wary, however, of making blanket statements about the populations of the underdeveloped world. For example, one often sees on film, on television, and in photographs in magazines pictures of negroes with splendid physique and dazzling white teeth or of Amazonian native Indians with fine bodies and happy faces or athletic Polynesians and these images fit ill with the general idea that the peoples of the Third World are physically weak, live in semi-starvation, and are diseased. This is not to deny that large numbers, very large numbers, are weak, undernourished and diseased but the point should be made that it is possible for peoples in the Third World to live active, healthy lives providing they get enough to eat We pay much attention to what we call ‘a balanced diet’, but as Carpenter has said, ‘there is no one “right” pattern for a good diet. Many quite different combinations of food can be used — combinations including individual foods that are, taken by themselves, quite unbalanced’.¹ Thus, he goes on to say, ‘a housewife in Britain is wise to feel that she should serve her family a dish containing milk and a green vegetable every day; but it would not be equally sensible to teach Eskimo women that they must do the same thing.