Diet and state of nutrition of Pakistani infants in Bradford, Yorkshire.

Relation of Poverty and Race to Birth Weight and Organ and Cell Structure in the Newborn

“…Total volume of hematopoietic tissue in the liver was somewhat greater in infants of the nonpoor (Table II). Even when represented in proportion of mean liver weight, there was 1 Mean organ and body measurements in Caucasian, black, and Puerto Rican newborn infants from poor families in percentages of "normal" published values [12]. P is greater than 0.1 in all of the intergroup comparisons, except for brain (P < 0.05) and kidney (P < 0.1) comparisons between blacks and Puerto Ricans.…”

“…Children of poor families in other nations also have an excessive perinatal mortality [3,6,34,35]. Inadequate maternal prenatal care has been cited by some and rejected by others as the factor principally responsible for the large perinatal losses of the poor [1,16,31,34]. It is widely agreed that birth weights are lower in the poor and that such low weights are associated with their high perinatal mortality [3, 6, 8, 13-15, 29, 32, 35].…”

Past and Present Malnutrition and Its Effect on Health Today

“…Scottish adults are shorter than English adults-Aberdeen women, in a comparison given by Baird and Thomson (1969) are much shorter than English women-and the mortality from falls in Scottish people over 75 years of age is higher than that of English people. Comparable statistics for the U.S.A. show that American Negroes-who are known to have a greater skeletal mass than &dquo;whites&dquo; and who suffer less than &dquo;whites&dquo; from osteoporosis, experience a comparatively small mortality from falls which has changed little over this century, but American &dquo;whites&dquo; have shown a steady fall in mortality from a very high level early in this century to a mortality similar to that of the English at present.…”

“…In the British Perinatal Survey, Baird and Thomson (1969) showed that low maternal height together with its associated low birthweight, is also associated with a high perinatal mortality. Regional differences in the height of adult women between north and south and between urban and rural districts are associated with corresponding differences in perinatal death-rates.…”

“…As with adult height the average birthweights of babies born into communities who suffer undernutrition, are lower than those of babies in better nourished communities. Probably this is attributable less to malnutrition of the mother during the course of pregnancy, than to past failure of the mother to attain the full potential of physique which her genetic structure would have allowed; because malnutrition in her own childhood retarded her growth.In the British Perinatal Survey, Baird and Thomson (1969) showed that low maternal height together with its associated low birthweight, is also associated with a high perinatal mortality. Regional differences in the height of adult women between north and south and between urban and rural districts are associated with corresponding differences in perinatal death-rates.…”