DEFECTIVE NUTRITION OF CHILDREN IN WAR-STRICKEN EUROPE

We have taken occasion at various times to point out some of the important practical consequences of the more recently acquired information regarding the food requirements of the human body in childhood. Contrary to the older assumptions, whereby the needs of the growing child for food fuel were expressed in proportionate fractions of the energy requirement of the adult, the modern nutrition studies, in this country in particular, have demonstrated the unexpectedly higher basal metabolism of childhood. If it is true, as Lusk ¹ has maintained, that many cases of reported chronic malnutrition of infants are in reality due to persistent undernutrition, carried out in ignorance of the proper amount of food required by the child, a comparable ignorance applies to the dietary of later childhood years. It cannot be reiterated too often, until the knowledge has been firmly established where it is most needed, that the basal requirement of