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98   Common Sense Should Impel
     Moves to End U.S. Hunger
     The Washington Post  Saturday, May 18 1968

    Controversy over priorities for effective action quickly dissipates
our verbal compassion about poverty.  Do we stress racial self-esteem
or integration,jobs or schools, reform or law and order?  We argue,
and we procrastinate.  Meanwhile, children go hungry, a crime that
no civilized community knowingly tolerates.

     The most recent documentation of "Hunger, U.S.A." was issued a
few weeks ago by an unimpeachable Citizens Board of Inquiry inspired
by Walter Reuther.  Its findings were mainly anecdotal; but a few 
realistic pictures of starvation may have more human impact than do
scientific statistics.

     These graphic portrayals of misery have been widely publicized
and have received the most compassionate editorial comment.  It still
has to be seen whether the government will respond to some  common
sense proposals for Federal salvage of local irresponsibility in 
existing programs.

     The most cogent indictment in the report was that food subsidy
programs have been geared more closely to the management of 
agricultural surpluses than to the needs of the poor and hungry. The 
same criticism must, of course, be lodged against our programs of 
foreign food aid.

     The more analytical parts of the report deserve more attention
than they have received.  "We have been startled by the absence of
knowledge, research, experimentation, affirmative action--and even
concern.  The sad truth is that the extent of recorded medical 
knowledge about dietary intake and malnutrition among the poor in the
U.S. consists of approximately 30 studies.  Those who have gained 
expertise in malnutrition problems among the poor have done so ... in 
other countries.  The problems at home have been ignored.

     "Society uses the lack of data as the basis of its inability to
move quickly toward solutions."

     In fact, the inquiry is not, in a scientific sense, an important
contribution to the statistics of hunger in the United States.  There
was no difficulty in finding too many poignant examples of starving
children; but it had no tools to assess the actual magnitude of the
problem, or to define it more sharply in terms of the specific    
nutrients that were lacking in the diets of particular people.

     The board's approach to a solution is the only one that can be
mounted quickly enough to meet the immediate emergency: make an
abundance of food more readily available.  Where cash is lacking,
distribute food stamps more widely to the poor, and they will eat
enough.

     The urgency of these measures is sharpened by increasing evidence
of the stunting effect of malnutrition during the early years of life.
Recent studies by Dr. Stephen Zamenhof at the University of California
at Los Angeles have verified that when pregnant mice are fed
protein-deficient diets, their offspring are born with
neurone-deficient brains.  Since there is good evidence that brain
neurones do not multiply significantly after birth, these studies
give a firm biological basis to clinical observations on mental
retardation in protein-starved children.  Dr. B. F. Chow at Johns
Hopkins University has led several studies on rats with similar
effects on learning behavior ("intelligence?") of the offspring.
Furthermore, female rats that had been congenitally stunted by
starvation did not fully sustain the nutrition of their offspring,
even though they were adequately fed during their own pregnancy.

     In the long run, the whole society will pay for the imposed
retardation of its human resources.  There is no surer mortgage 
against our future than to neglect present-day hunger.  But the
response must be twofold": prompt intervention with common sense but
crude measures like food stamps, especially for mothers and children,
and a long range program of nutritional research, field study and
education in elementary domestic science for the most efficient use
of our total resources.

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