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The Nutrition Crusade
by Ann Cameron
Once upon a time there was a busy, hard-working country that paid scant
attention to its children. In their rare moments of leisure, most adults
obsessed about their health, but they hardly had time to think of anyone else's.
One day the country's president, a busy man but kind at heart, noticed the
country's children. They were weak, listless, and undersized for their age. The
president believed that the children were suffering from malnutrition.
He called the nation's best counselors on health to a meeting. It wasn't long
before they reached the obvious diagnosis: the adults were so busy they were
neglecting the children's nutrition. What the children needed was more and
better food. It was time, past time, for a nutrition crusade.
The country had a large cadre of nurses, and the president, backed by his
advisers, called on nurses everywhere to feed the children daily. Under the
watchful eyes of the nurses, the children would eat together in lrge groups, and
they would receive a highly enriched diet.
Most of the nurses loved children, and those who didn't were sure they could
learn to love them. They agreed to their new role at once--but the president and
his advisers, wisely, felt some objective measure was needed to make sure that
the children's condition really did improve.
They argued about what that measure should be. They thought of measuring the
children's level of activity, or measuring their height. One sentimentalist even
suggested counting the children's smiles per day and number of times a week that
they laughed. But finally all those measures struck the president and his
advisers as either dangerously subjective or far too complicated and
time-consuming. They decided on one simple measurement that would work for all
children: every six months, the nurses were to weigh them. This would provide an
objective evaluation of both the children's nutrition and the nurses' abilities.
To clarify the goal, the president's advisers set a standard for minimum
acceptable weight-gain, and since the children were in such bad condition they
set it high.
They told all the country's adults about the new standards, and the adults
applauded, relieved that the nurses were going to handle the problem and be in
charge of the crusade.
To make sure the nurses took their new role seriously, the president and his
advisers told them their jobs were at stake. Any nurse who failed to up-size the
children to the minimum weight-gain within a year would be fired. The nurses
objected, but nurses are nurses and presidents are
presidents--so in the end, all the nurses could do was acquiesce and go to work.
The president asked the congress to allot money generously for food and feeding
stations. The congress consulted their own experts, then voted for half the
funds the president had requested. The money was passed to the nurses, who set
up the feeding stations, then went out and bought lettuce and turnips, eggs and
milk, and many other things. They cooked as well as they could and gathered the
children for meals.
Unfortunately, the children weren't terribly cooperative. Many of them had never
met a vegetable before and were not enthralled by the first encounter. Many had
become so used to malnutrition that they were no longer hungry. To them, food
was to play with.
"It will be very bad for you, and bad for us," the nurses threatened, "if you
don't eat more!" But the children were unmoved.
Alarmed the nurses warned the president, congress and public that it takes time
to change children's dietary habits. In response, the president thundered once
more his lifelong motto: "Stay the course! Only a coward backs away from a job!"
Congress and public applauded.
Suddenly added to the nurses' problems was the discovery that the country didn't
have nearly enough scales to weigh all the children. As ordered by congress, the
nurses set out to buy scales with half the money allotted for food.
Scale-makers had never been much appreciated in the country, but now they found
they were revered. They couldn't manufacture fast enough to meet the demand.
Many opportunists with no scale-making experience rushed new models into
production, and all the scale makers went from feeding station to feeding
station showing their wares.
Some of the scales were hastily fabricated and shoddy, but all, naturally, were
touted for one reason or another as the best ever made. There were scales that
cost more because they would weigh the children faster, scales that cost extra
because of their delicacy and precision, scales that cost double because they
were made by leading scientists, scales that cost three times as much because
there made by secret processes none could question or imitate. Most expensive of
all were the scales sold quietly by the cleverest producers, who had seen the
scrawny children and understood the nurses predicament. Secretly, they offered
scales guaranteed to weigh children ten or more pounds higher than their actual
weight.
Meantime, the feeding program continued. Nurses who had thought they loved
children began to use long-forgotten tactics with the youngsters in their
charge. Children were told that obedience is the first law of life. They were
told they couldn't leave the table till they'd eaten everything on their plates.
Nurses pulled their hair and twisted their arms if they didn't eat, and so some
did learn that obedience is indeed the first law of life.
Yet, as the deadline for the first weigh-in came closer, many nurses became
desperate. True, there were children who learned to like turnips and drink their
milk. These ran around after lunch and they looked healthier.
But there wasn't much money available to buy food, and the children hadn't
gained enough weight to meet the minimum standard. The nurses worried about what
to do and consulted with each other in private. Reluctantly, they did what had
to be done: they went to the market and bought fifty-pound tubs of lard.
Two nurses together would stand over children and force them to eat lard with a
spoon. If children resisted, struggled, one nurse would pin down flailing arms
while another would use a funnel and pour melted lard into a young throat,
massaging the front of the neck so the lard would stay down.
A few children developed a taste for lard, and they fattened the quickest. Even
to the nurses, these children looked grotesque--wider than they were tall, with
bulging cheeks. But, fearing for their own jobs, the nurses praised the lard
eaters in front of all the children and called them "Conquerors of Malnutrition"
and future leaders of the land. After lunch, the lard eaters lumbered proudly
among the feeding stations with four gold stars on their foreheads.
But they paid dearly for their prizes. The instant they left the feeding
stations, they were attacked by angry, thinner children who pinched and kicked
them and ripped off their bright gold stars. Unfortunately for the lard eaters,
they'd become too heavy to run, too awkward to escape.
Some children ate a little lard every day, or pretended to eat it so as not to
be funnel-fed. Others vomited and left the feeding stations for good, even when
nurses told them that all the future held was lard or starvation.
The day of the first weigh-in came. All over the land, thousands of gleaming
scales were in their proper places. The nurses were anxious but hopeful. The
thinnest children had disappeared from the feeding stations to who cared where,
and were no longer the nurses' responsibility. All the remaining children had
fattened. They stood patiently in line to be weighed, while the nurses came to
them one by one, seeing to it that they drank a half gallon of water just before
they got on the scales.
In the end, ninety percent of children measured had met the first minimum
weight-gain standard. All the nurses got bonuses, all the adults got a holiday,
and there was a nationwide celebration.
The president spoke on television about the nearly miraculous progress that had
been made by a dedicated band of nurses. Leading scale-makers stood beside him
and applauded. Interviewed after the ceremony, the scale makers quietly took
greatest credit for the success of the crusade.
Without objective measurement, they argued, there would likely have been no
improvement at all in children's nutrition. The pointed out how much good had
been done, almost overnight, with a little food and a lot of scales. With a
little less food, double the scales, and more frequent weigh-ins, they argued,
the success rate in the children's nutrition crusade would reach 100%--and no
one, not even the nurses, could deny the logic of that.
Copyright 2000 by Ann Cameron
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