Impact of Malnutrition on Mental Performance and National Development

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By Tope Akinnola

 

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I remember that in my final year during my undergraduate studies, a lecturer on sabbatical from University of Lagos taught us a course titled organisation psychology and I, on record, topped the class in that course (even though I majored in sociology). While we were dissecting the topic of leadership models, not only in the organisational setting, but also in national settings across both the developed and underdeveloped world, the professor shared some interesting insights with our class, stating that children born in less developed or under-developed nations tend to turn out to become less intelligent than children born in the more developed societies.

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He said that the reason was because pregnant women in the less developed, impoverished societies don’t feed well, that is, they don’t eat balanced diets during gestation; unlike pregnant women in the more developed societies who feed well or better, and so tend to eat more balanced diets during gestation. He then concluded that this has serious implications for children that are born and that grow into adults in different societies.

 

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Being a scientifically-minded and data-driven person that I am, even though the statements or propositions made sense to me, I still didn’t take them hook, line and sinker; especially because he showed us no peer-reviewed, data-driven evidence to back up his words. It took several years later during a period of my own personal or independent research that I ran into and discovered research data that confirmed what this university don told us in class many, many years previously. That is why today, I tend to think, with good reason, that there is a connection between food security, mental reasoning or performance and national development.

 

Janina Galler, a child psychologist and neuro-biologist, has described studies that connect Pfenniger’s cellular and molecular perspective to  developing human mind. Her results and conclusions, based on work done with children in Barbados and the Yucatan, as well as experiments carefully carried out with animals, show the fact that deprivation in early childhood (that is, malnutrition and especially, lack of stimulus) interferes with the development of intelligence; and thus, the brain.

 

In over 25 years of researching and studying how the combination of poverty and malnutrition of children (who grow up primarily in disadvantaged environments) affect learning, she gained insight into how these early childhood experiences exert lasting and profound effect on mental development and performance.

 

Now, it is common knowledge that animal models are used to study human problems, and this includes childhood malnutrition as well. After closely following a rat colony that she inherited from Reg Stewart of the London School of Tropical Hygiene for 25 generations, Dr Galler made two interesting and instructive observations:

 

First, that males had a harder time overcoming the deficits of malnutrition than did the females. This is not a complete surprise since it has been known and recognised that the male foetus, even among humans, is generally more prone or vulnerable to prenatal damage.

 

Second,  it took from two to three generations to overcome some of the deficits of malnutrition that she observed, which made her to conclude that the effects of early childhood malnutrition lasted generationally.

 

If there is anything credible about the above observations at all, it only implies that the effects of kwashiorkor and protein-energy malnutrition (PEM) which are still common in many underdeveloped nations can last generationally in terms of the mental performance of the victims.

 

S. Crnic (1990), another authority on this issue once said, “The effects of nutrients on behaviour, whether short-term or permanent, are of more concern in children than adults. This is because it is well-established that the developing organism is more vulnerable to nutritional insult than the mature organism.”

 

And, L. Sinisterra (1987), commented on the results of intervention programmes for the poor in Cali, Colombia. The programme was targeted at resolving the problems of early malnutrition, attention deficit disorder and school performance. He said and I quote: “Even after children had physically recovered, it was relatively easy to see that they suffered emotional, psychological, and social retardation. Children of 5 or 6 years behaved like toddlers of 2 or 3 years. Colombiharina, a food supplement, repeatedly proved to be excellent for physical recuperation, but useless in the face of the mental impact of malnutrition…”

 

Poor nutrition, characterised by zinc, iron, vitamin B, and protein deficiencies (nutrients linked to brain development) in early childhood have also been associated with not only lower levels of intelligence but also later antisocial behaviour, according to another more recent University of Southern California study.

 

Researchers also found out that the more indicators of malnutrition there were, the more the incidence of antisocial behaviour. The study, titled, ”Malnutrition in Early Years Leads to Low IQ and Later Antisocial Behaviour,” was published in 2004.

The crucial point is this: the effects of early childhood malnutrition can last generationally, potentially two to three generations. That is alarming! And this has implications for national development especially in underdeveloped or developing regions of the world such as Nigeria.

 

A nation that fails to prioritize, guarantee and ensure food security is on ‘self-mutilation’ mode in terms of technological innovation, creativity and global impact. When we come to the understanding of the negative mental impact of malnutrition on intelligence or mental performance and that the effects of childhood malnutrition can last generationally in an alarming way, then a nation worth its salt will create and pursue robust plans to ensure that there’s food security for all and sundry.

 

And don’t forget that food security is not only about having ‘enough’ food, but having ‘enough of balanced diet’ to feed on. Malnutrition at whatever degree is caused by not having enough of the right kind of nutrients in the food we eat. Nigeria will continue to churn out malnourished children with either stunted growth or low intelligence in several millions as long as the poverty rate in the country deepens, and for as long as the society is governed by extremely irresponsible and unconscionable corrupt officials, a lot of who themselves are products of malnutrition at some point in their childhood and so have low quality of intelligence, even after acquiring sudden wealth.

 

 

Tope Akinnola writes in from Lagos.

 

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