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(a) Nutrition.
Table IIb gives a classification of the nutrition of the children
inspected during the year in the routine age-groups. Of the total
number of children examined in these groups it will be seen that
26 per cent, were classified as excellent from the point of view of
nutrition, 61.4 as normal, 12.1 as slightly subnormal, and only
.5 as bad. If columns A and B in the table are taken together,
and columns B and C, it is seen that the nutrition of 87.4 per cent,
of the children examined was either excellent or normal, while that
of 12.6 per cent, was either slightly subnormal or bad. These
figures are, on the whole, fairly satisfactory, but there is, of course,
room for considerable improvement yet.
If the different age groups are examined separately, it will be
seen that the figures for the first two groups, the entrants and the
eight-year-old children are not quite so good as those for the third
age group or twelve-year-old children, or the "other routine
inspections," which in Wood Green are mostly children of thirteen
or fourteen years. Thus, of the children leaving school at the end
of their elementary school life, at least 30 per cent. are found to
be of excellent nutrition and only 10 per cent. slightly subnormal
or bad.
I remarked in my report for 1935 that a steady, if slow, improvement
is taking place in the nutrition of the children in this district.
We still find the occasional badly nourished child, the malnutrition
sometimes the result of poverty, but more often perhaps due to
other causes. Where poverty is the cause, a great deal can be done
and is being done by the provision of free milk at school, free
dinners at the centre, and free cod-liver oil; and where previous
illness is a cause of malnutrition, help can be given by sending the
child to a convalescent home. Where the poor nutrition is the
result not of lack of food, but of bad feeding habits, poor discipline
in the home, and too short hours of sleep, the remedy is not so easy.
Repeated insistence in interviews with parents on the importance
of proper feeding, and particularly of the paramount importance in
the diet of the protective foods—milk, butter, cheese, eggs, fruits
and vegetables—is no doubt having some effect in promoting right
ideas among the parents on the subject of feeding, and a good deal
is being done by the provision of a regular supply of milk in schools
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