Nutrition intervention: an evaluation of six studies.

Six nutrition intervention studies were evaluated in the context of a predetermined methodology covering several categories of evaluative criteria. After a presentation of reasons for including each study, a summary is presented of the results of each study in light of the present investigators' evaluation and secondary analyses. Nutrition intervention programs can have a positive effect on health indices of infants and children, but much can be done in future nutrition projects to improve project design and thereby assist and facilitate more meaningful evaluations of nutrition intervention. To this end, a set of points for consideration by those designing nutrition intervention projects is provided.

Etiological determinants of protein calorie undernutrition in a rural child community.

Two groups of randomly selected underweight and well-nourished preschool children residing in study villages of Punjab, Ludhiana district were examined with respect to their socioeconomic background, birth weights, dietary intakes, quality of received mother care, blood biochemistry, parasite load, psychomotor development and past illness prevalence. It was found that underweight children showed significantly less favourable indices in all of the above categories except stool parasitology suggesting an extremely intricate and complex interaction of a host of ecological variables in the causation of undernutrition. Using the discriminate analysis on readily available social variables, it was found that caste affiliation and, less so parental income were the two most significant variables distinguishing between the two groups. A model for the interaction patterns of ecological variables in their effect of protein calorie malnutrition for the given area is suggested.