Human Nutrition in the Developing
World
by Michael C. Latham
Pub.: Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO),
(Food and Nutrition Series, V. 29, No. 2). FAO Bookshop, Viale delle Terme di
Caracalla, 00100 Rome, ITALY. Year: 1997. Paperback. 508 pp. ISBN: 925103818X.
E-mail: Publications-sales@fao.org.
Reviewed by Joan
Allen-Peters
FAO promotes this as a 'comprehensive
introduction to nutritional problems in developing countries,' and from the
perspective of someone who has been looking for just such a resource text for
undergraduates majoring in nutrition, their statement is accurate but perhaps
overly modest!
Dr. Latham's many years of teaching in the field
of international nutrition provide the basis for a broad and scientifically
sound coverage of nutrition issues. Even more important for those interested in
the holistic approach to health, nutrition and development, the book examines
not only the major nutritional disorders, their causes and prevention, but also
the factors contributing to these. Food production, food security, health
status, and social and cultural factors are all given careful consideration.
The book pays special attention to the important
role that food security, adequate care and good health play as prerequisites to
human nutritional well-being. There is a welcome emphasis on the value of
multidisciplinary applied approaches to overcoming malnutrition, especially
those that are food-based and truly sustainable.
Part V of 'Human Nutrition in the Developing
World' reviews nutrition policies and programs in a number of timely and
relevant areas, including nutrition surveillance, food safety, micronutrient
deficiencies, group feeding and street foods. Useful annexes, including tables
of recommended nutrient intakes, nutrient content of selected foods, and
anthropometric tables complete the practical information provided. Attractive
illustrations, including some from the second edition of the excellent
Savage-Kind and Burgess text 'Nutrition for Developing Countries,' add to the
readability and interest level of the text.
This is an ideal text not only for formal
undergraduate teaching in international nutrition, but also as a reference for
community health, education and agriculture workers looking for simple and
practical information to help solve problems of undernutrition in the
developing world.
Joan Allen-Peters is on the faculty of the
School of Nutrition/Food Science, Acadia University, Wolfville, Nova Scotia,
Canada, B0P 1X0.
New FAO publication: "Human Nutrition in the Developing World"
 |
"Human
Nutrition in the Developing World", an important new FAO textbook and reference work, brings
together under one cover encyclopaedic knowledge on the subject, and puts
nutrition into the broader context of human development.
The 508-page book is written not
only for universities and training andtechnical institutions, but also for
public policy-makers and programme planners and managers at economic,
agriculture and health ministries. It is illustrated with 24 figures, 52
tables, 86 photographs and five annexes including recommended intakes,
anthropometric data, nutrient content of selected food, an index and a selected
bibliography.
An important theme that runs
through the book is that investing in people is just as important as investing
in infrastructure. A well nourished child can learn better. A well nourished
adult can produce more. The emphasis in "Human Nutrition in the Developing
World" is therefore on human development.
"This book highlights not only the linkage between nutrition and health, but also the economic, social and food basis of nutrition," said Dr John Lupien, Director of the FAO Food and Nutrition Division.
The book provides scientifically
based information on food, nutrients, causes of malnutrition, and nutritional
disorders and their prevention. It emphasizes that many developing countries
can improve their food supplies, employment opportunities and raise both
national and individual incomes through better development of their
agricultural resources. This could lead to dietary and nutritional improvements
among low-income families, directly, or through increased social sector
spending made possible by greater national and community wealth. It also points
out that where malnutrition is widespread, food-based approaches are the only sustainable
way to improve the nutritional status of all.
The text summarizes key points in human nutrition and provides information about proteins, fats, carbohydrates, minerals and vitamins, with special emphasis on nutritional needs of infants, children, mothers and the elderly. Basic information about foods commonly found in the diets of Africans, Asians and Latin Americans is given.
The author, Michael Latham, Professor of International Nutrition at Cornell University in New York, United States, wrote another popular FAO book on nutrition in tropical Africa that was first published in 1965. The International Conference on Nutrition (ICN), sponsored jointly by FAO and the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1992, served as a catalyst for a new, expanded version of the book.
The ICN, attended by ministers and
plenipotentiaries of 159 nations, and the 1996 World Food Summit (WFS),
attended by heads of state and government and other senior officials of 186 countries,
have provided a framework for policies and programmes that will help ease the
suffering of the 800 million undernourished people in the world.
"Human Nutrition in the Developing World" fills in that framework with a comprehensive overview of nutritional problems in developing countries divided into five parts - causes of malnutrition, basic nutrition, disorders of malnutrition, foods, and nutritional policies and programmes.
The book makes it clear that poverty and social discrimination are the most important causes of food insecurity and malnutrition. However, it offers cost-effective ways to improve dietary intakes and nutritional status by strengthening local food systems, improving sanitation and health care, especially of the poor and nutritionally vulnerable, and by improving overall care and feeding practices.
Human nutrition in the developing world, FAO Food and Nutrition Series No. 29, FAO, Rome,
1997. 508 pp. ISBN 92-5-103818-X. Price US$52.00. To order, contact FAO Sales and Marketing
Group, Viale delle Terme di Caracalla, 00100 Rome, Italy, or E-mail Publications-sales@FAO.Org.
|
_____________________________________________________________________
Michael C. Latham, Expert on Nutrition in Developing World, Dies
at 82
Michael C. Latham, an expert on international nutrition and tropical health who waged a
long campaign against the use of infant formula and for the practice of breastfeeding in developing countries,
died on April 1 in Boston. He was 82 and lived in Newfield, N.Y.
The cause was pneumonia, his son Mark said.
Dr. Latham, who directed the Program in International
Nutrition at Cornell University for 25 years, first encountered
the problems of nutrition in the developing world while practicing medicine as
a young doctor for the British colonial service in Tanganyika (now Tanzania).
After the country had gained its independence, he
stayed on and was appointed the director of the nutrition unit of the public
health ministry. He became alarmed at efforts by Western companies to expand
their marketing of infant formula to underdeveloped countries, where high birth
rates promised a growing consumer base, and he became one of the first and most
forceful public health scientists to sound a warning.
In many poor countries, he pointed out, mothers
mixed powdered baby formula with contaminated water, leading to diarrheal
diseases. To make the formula last longer, they often used too little of the
powder, depriving their babies of vital nutrients.
Bottle feeding was “incredibly difficult
and extremely bad,” Dr. Latham wrote in a 1976 report with Ted Greiner, but
“the media onslaught is terrific, the messages are powerful and the profits are
high.”
“High also is
the resultant human suffering,” they wrote.
Dr. Latham’s cause, taken up by several health
groups, led the World Health Organization in 1981 to develop a set of
guidelines, the International Code of Marketing
of Breast-milk Substitutes, which was intended to govern the
behavior of private companies. He was a prominent figure in the boycott of Nestlé, a
leading manufacturer of infant formula, which agreed in 1984 to abide by the
marketing code.
Michael
C. Latham in 1995.
Credit Cornell University
Credit Cornell University
The ideal food for infants, Dr. Latham argued,
was breast milk. Its benefits, he wrote, were not
limited to improved physical and mental development. It could also potentially
curb population growth, he argued, since parents who were confident that their
children would thrive would be more likely to have smaller families. In 1991,
he helped found the World Alliance for
Breastfeeding Action to explain and promote the benefits of
breastfeeding around the world.
Michael Charles Latham was born on May 6, 1928, in
Kilosa, Tanganyika, where his father was a doctor in the British colonial
service. After earning a medical degree from Trinity College, Dublin, in 1952,
he worked in hospitals in Britain and the United
States before returning to Tanganyika to practice medicine in rural areas.
During intermittent leaves, he earned a diploma in tropical public health from
the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 1958.
After leaving Tanzania in 1964, he taught nutrition
at Harvard, where he received a degree in public health in 1965. In 1968 he was
recruited by Cornell as a professor of international nutrition. He turned the
university’s small Program in International Nutrition into one of the world’s
largest training centers for nutritionists, many of whom went on to work in
international agencies and public health departments around the world.
His research led to improved programs on infant
nutrition, the control of parasitic diseases in humans, and the supply of
micronutrients to poor populations.
Dr. Latham often did consulting work in Africa, Asia
and South America for organizations like the World Health Organization, the
United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, Unicef and the World Bank.
In addition to his son Mark, of Somerville, Mass.,
he is survived by his second wife, Dr. Lani Stephenson, and another son, Miles,
of Trumansburg, N.Y.
He was the author of two important books on
international nutrition, “Human Nutrition in Tropical Africa” (1965) and “Human
Nutrition in the Developing World” (1997), as well as a family memoir,
“Kilimanjaro Tales: The Saga of a Medical Family in Africa” (1995), which drew
on the journals kept by his mother, Gwynneth Latham.
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