Worldwide, 170 million children 5 or younger are not growing appropriately because they lack proper nutrition, according to the World Health Organization.
“Though undernutrition is not a big problem in the United States or Europe or Japan or Australia—the high-income countries—from a global perspective, it’s a huge problem,” says Jere Behrman, the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Economics in the School of Arts & Sciences.
Previous research proved associations between undernourishment during early life, particularly a child’s first 24 months, and areas like cognitive skills, schooling levels, wage rates in adulthood, and next-generation birth weights.
Now, work from Behrman and colleagues from the Universidad de Chile, the University of Houston, and others, verified the importance of protein intake during this period. Analyzing data from more than 3,500 children from Guatemala and the Philippines, they found that upping protein by just one egg per week positively affected growth, which could lead to better outcomes later.
The scientists published their findings in the journal Economics and Human Biology.
For further details, see Penn Current.
