For nine months a study steam of health workers visited the family of every child who had died in certain mountain villages. They learned that two-thirds of all children between the ages of one and five really died of kwashiorkor. During the entire nine months, however, not one death was recorded officially as being caused by poor food, although recorders admitted that parents had described all the signs of kwashiorkor in the dying child. One of the saddest discoveries made was that parents took away any food containing protein from a sick child and instead fed him starchy soups made of rice and sugar. As a result of this treatment, the child with kwashiorkor usually died without even reaching the hospital. Those children who escaped death were often not normal. The development of the mind might be slowed. Body growth was stopped. Some people argue that children of poor countries are short because their parents are short, but the studies have proved this to be false. Their parents are short because they, too, did not have enough protein. The studies showed that children in Central America grow as rapidly as children in the United States until the second part of their first year, as long as they take mother’s milk. During their school years, they gain in weight and bone development at a rate comparable to that of children in the United States. But by this time, they are several years behind in size, since they did not grow well during the years between the time they were babies and the time they went to school.

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