ABSTRACT
A survey of households in rural Laguna in the Philippines used the proportion of preschool children below 75 per cent of Harvard standard weight-for-age as a basis for comparing the nutritional status of different groups. There is a long history of attempts to introduce a degree of nutritional thinking into food supply planning by comparing the food balance sheet for a nation with an estimate of its overall nutritional requirements. Policies for agricultural inputs, price controls, and subsidies are then supposedly influenced by what is thought necessary to close any gap between food supplies and needs. Nutritionists and planners will be concerned to see these numbers reduced, but aggregate indicators of food availability do not give any information about them. Developing the capacity of a data system to monitor and to predict trends is probably the most technically demanding aspect. It could, however, prove to be highly important in the long run.
