Response to “Malnutrition and Dietary Protein: Evidence from China and from International Comparisons”

Abstract

The opportunity to comment on the paper by Jamison and his colleagues [1] is most welcome. My perspective and biases on the issues they discuss are based largely on work in pediatrics and community health in Turkey Colombia and Thailand during a period of 17 years. In addition I was privileged to visit China in 1973 as a member of the Early Childhood Development Delegation one of the earliest US delegations to visit China when I was able to pay particular attention to growth in children under five years of age [2-4]. Nutrition growth and mortality in young children have been major concerns throughout my career. Dr. Jamison has studied health issues having to do with China for many years and this is an interesting contribution. There is no need here to repeat the study design but the three populations from which data were used for the study must be mentioned. They include: Data from a sample of urban adults aged 18 to 25 years from 13 provinces of China in 1979: information on average heights and weights for men and women and on average income and availability of energy and protein; Data from a sample of adult men and women from 64 rural counties: information on heights and weights plus data on income energy availability and protein share from 26 provinces around 1983; Data from 41 populations of men and 33 populations of women in 40 and 32 countries respectively: information on average heights as well as income energy protein share and ethnic group around 1960. (excerpt)