UN touts vitamins to fight intellect dip

[xoxoxoBruce]

By CHRIS HAWLEY Associated Press
UNITED NATIONS'- The brainpower of entire nations has diminished because of a shortage of the right vitamins, and slipping nutrients into people's food seems to be the only solution, a new U.N. survey says.
To fight the problem, the United Nations is prescribing a whole pantry of artificially fortified foods: soy sauce laced with zinc, "super salt" spiked with iron, cooking oil fortified with vitamin A.
Deficiencies in these vitamins are having alarming effects in developing countries, even ones where people generally have enough to eat, said the study, released Wednesday.
A lack of iron lowers children's IQs by an average five to seven points, the report said. A deficiency in iodine.cuts it 13 more points, said Verikatesh Mannar, president of the Micronutrient Initiative, which produced the report along with the United Nations Children's Fund. Birth defects increase when mothers don't get enough folic acid, and a shortage of vitamin A makes children 25-30 percent more likely to die of disease.
"So ubiquitous is vitamin and mineral deficiency that it debilitates in some significant degree the energies, intellects, and economic prospects of nations," the study said.
It looked at 80 developing countries representing some 80 percent of the world's population. It found:
•Iodine deficiency has lowered the intellectual capacity of almost all of the nations by as much as 10 to 15 percentage points. It causes 18 million children a year to be born mentally impaired.
•Iron deficiency in adults is so widespread that it lowers the productivity of work forces.
•Deficiencies in folic acid - a nutrient needed for tissue growth, especially in pregnant women - causes approximately 200,000 severe birth defects every year in the 80 countries.
•About 40 percent of the developing world's people suffer from iron deficiency, 15 percent lack adequate iodine and as many as 40 percent do not get enough vitamin A.
In most Western countries, governments have fought the problem' with additives: iodine is sprayed onto salt before packaging, vitamin A is added to milk and margarine, and flour is enriched with niacin, iron and folic acid.
But that doesn't work in countries where governments, are weak, food is not processed in big mills and diets are based on a single starchy staple like rice or corn.

Maybe we could export "flintstones" to help our trade deficit.