Aarin Gowan
March 10, 2015
Anthropology 353
Dr. Godde
Comparison of Childhood Nutritional Trends Between China, Ethiopia and the United States The nutritional status of a country can be determined by the combination and interplay of a few key factors. According to Mamabolo and others (2005), these factors include economic, demographic, environmental and cultural changes taking place within a population, which all ultimately play a role in the determination of the overall nutritional status of that population. Physical growth patterns in children are good indicators of a population’s nutritional status. One of the two major factors that influences physical growth patterns is the environment, with genetics as the other regulatory factor. Thus,
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First, it is no surprise that in a developing country such as Ethiopia that malnutrition is such a primary concern. Without proper food and nourishment, children are more susceptible to disease and are less likely to grow and develop properly. Poor conditions contribute to this, in the form of unsafe drinking water and little nourishing food available for consumption, which only serves to cause health problems for the already weakened children. Hopefully, as the country develops further, proper sanitation and better food production and distribution will allow the prevalence of wasting to decrease over time. China is an example of this development taking place. Twenty-five years ago, wasting and underweight were common amongst children under the age of 5 residing in rural areas of China; with the advent of improved food production and distribution, and as the country developed as a whole, the prevalence of both wasting and underweight has decreased significantly. While up to 32% of American children are within normal weight for height ranges, only up to one-third of that percentage of Ethiopian children reach normal weight for their height. The comparison is less stark, however, between China and the United States; in fact, there seems to be very little significant difference between the percentages of normal weight for height ranges of the two countries. All these data seem to suggest that proper nutrition comes with country development, something that can only be remedied over