International Journal of Epidemiology 2003;32:500-502
© International Epidemiological Association 2003
Reprints and Reflections |
Commentary: The context and outcome of nutrition campaigning in 1934
University of Aberdeen, Department of History, Meston Walk, Aberdeen AB24 3FX, UK. E-mail: d.f.smith@abdn.ac.uk
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
John Pemberton’s paper, published in the summer of 1934,1 was written shortly after an episode that significantly raised the profile of questions concerning the adequacy of the diet of the poor: a controversy involving the British Medical Association (BMA) and the Ministry of Health. The BMA Nutrition Committee report on the minimum cost of an adequate diet, published in November 1933,2 which Pemberton draws upon, caused a political storm, partly because of the publicity given to the same kind of calculations as he presented. Very quickly, the Labour Party prepared speakers’ notes supplying figures showing the ‘amount left after purchasing the minimum foodstuffs laid down by the BMA would not pay the rent alone in many thousands of unemployed households’. From this it was concluded that ‘in order to pay the rent and purchase the bare necessities, the housewife must economise on food’.3
The Daily Herald greeted the report with