Maternal and child nutrition

Abstract

The Lancet Series on maternal and child nutrition has surprisingly put nutrition on top of the food security agenda. While acknowledging that many factors determine nutritional outcomes, unfortunately the Series' nutrition specific solutions and financing implications have received the most attention. Although food and agricultural policies have profound effects on nutritional outcomes, they tend to be ignored—perhaps because they are not amenable to the methodological sophistication of randomised controlled trials to provide apparent precision to the results. A number of measurement issues affect estimates of malnutrition and the appropriate means to address them—such as nutritional standards and norms, data, and analytics. Using Indian norms, Chand and Jumrani1Chand R Jumrani J Food security and undernourishment in India: assessment of alternative norms and the income effect.Indian J Agric Econ. 2013; 68: 39-53Google Scholar note that the extent of undernutrition turns out to be nearly twice the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates.2UN Food and Agriculture OrganizationHunger. Basic definitions.http://www.fao.org/hunger/en/Google Scholar Moreover, they also note that high levels of hunger exist in India even when its granaries are overflowing.1Chand R Jumrani J Food security and undernourishment in India: assessment of alternative norms and the income effect.Indian J Agric Econ. 2013; 68: 39-53Google Scholar These authors describe1Chand R Jumrani J Food security and undernourishment in India: assessment of alternative norms and the income effect.Indian J Agric Econ. 2013; 68: 39-53Google Scholar that a large surplus of grains has been lying in public buffer stock and a part of it needs proper storage and maintenance. Moreover, India's exports of food products have been growing, and the country now exports a substantial quantity of cereal and livestock products.1Chand R Jumrani J Food security and undernourishment in India: assessment of alternative norms and the income effect.Indian J Agric Econ. 2013; 68: 39-53Google Scholar India also imports large quantities of pulses—a major source of protein in the Indian diet—because an effective strategy for pulses is lacking.3Swamy G Will Indians stop eating pulses?.J Soc Econ Dev. 2012; 14: 238-248Google Scholar Overlooking these and other underlying determinants on nutrition incidence contributes to the inadvertent impression in the Lancet Series that food policies are peripheral to nutrition improvement. I declare that I have no conflicts of interest. I thank Lawrence Haddad and Gurushri Swamy for their comments. Maternal and child nutrition – Authors' replyWe welcome the opportunity to respond to the Correspondence concerning our Series on maternal and child nutrition. Full-Text PDF