Workers in the pediatric field have recognized that undernutrition is of major importance in developing countries around the world and have expressed interest in the extent to which efforts have been made in the United States to deal with this problem. This report attempts to bring together information from a wide variety of sources and to summarize the considerable efforts that have been made in dealing with these problems of undernutrition. It may provide a basis for future planning and involvement on the part of those concerned with solutions for the food problems abroad as well as the application of experience with them to situations in this country.
The vital importance of nutrition was forcefully described by the President's Science Advisory Committee in its 1968 report on the "World Food Problem."
The principal findings and conclusions reached were stated as follows:
1. the scale, severity, and duration of the world food problem are so great that a massive, long-range, innovative effort unprecedented in human history will be required to master it;
2. the solution of the problem that will exist after about 1985 demands that programs of family planning and population control be initiated now. The food supply is critical for the immediate future;
3. food supply is directly related to agricultural development and, in turn, agricultural development and overall economic development are critically interdependent in the hungry countries; and
4. a strategy for attacking the world food problem will, of necessity, encompass the entire foreign economic assistance effort of the United States in concert with other developed countries, voluntary institutions, and international organizations.
