This book is designed to cover the most important nutritional problems of developing countries and to suggest appropriate programmes and policies to address these. Good nutrition for all of humankind is a basic human right. This requires food security, good health and adequate care.
A bibliography is provided to bring some useful publications to the reader's attention; however, since this book is likely to be used by many persons who do not have easy access to good scientific, agricultural or medical libraries, the bibliography does not include journal articles, except for those that are cited in the text. For the same reason, the bibliography is not comprehensive; I can acknowledge in only a general way the many hundreds of books, journal articles, reports and pamphlets that I have consulted or those publications that have led to the total sum of knowledge that makes possible the preparation of a book such as this. Two books in the bibliography deserve special attention because they were most often consulted: Davidson and Passmore's Human nutrition and dietetics, a comprehensive textbook of nutrition; and King and Burgess' Nutrition for developing countries, a practical guide for nutrition workers dealing with problems in poor countries. Both are excellent publications.
I wish to acknowledge with gratitude some of the institutions that over many years have influenced my thinking on health, nutrition and development. These include Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, where I studied medicine; the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where I completed a degree in tropical public health; and Harvard University, where I attained a Master of Public Health degree and worked in the Department of Nutrition. However, it was more than nine years' experience working in the United Republic of Tanzania, both as a District Medical Officer and as Director of the Nutrition Unit in the Ministry of Health, that most enriched my knowledge of medicine, nutrition and life.
More than 25 years' service as Director and Professor of International Nutrition at Cornell University has provided me an unusual opportunity to work with a faculty with expertise in almost every aspect of nutrition, to learn from and to guide an extraordinary group of graduate students from all parts of the world and to be involved on the ground in a wide variety of nutrition activities in Africa, Asia and the Americas. These associations and experiences have been greatly rewarding to me and in different ways have influenced the content of this publication.
