ABSTRACT
Since this essay is a chapter in a volume on food in global history, the inclusion of non-food issues might be considered out of place. Nature, however, has placed non-food issues at the center of the discussion on nutrient undernutrition. However, only one of Herbert's mechanisms (1968) for determining nutriture relates to food intake. Experience in the tropics modifies and conditions the assumptions that "we are what we eat." For children in developing countries, it might better be stated that: "We are what we eat, plus what is sharing what we eat (parasitism), plus what is eating us (infections)."
