ABSTRACT
Nutrition is the process by which dietary constituents are converted into, maintain and sustain the body in health. Nutrition and genetic coding are the determinants of the body’s development and composition; they modulate and control its function and enable it to resist disease. Nutrition is the major variable that determines the quality of the body – the ‘soil’ in which the ‘seeds’ of disease germinate. The battle between the nutritional ‘soil’ and the etiological ‘seed’ determines the course of most diseases. Both nutritional state and genetic endowment should be viewed separately from the agents of disease. They determine the internal environment in which the seeds of disease flourish or fail. Why should measles be a relatively minor exanthem in Europe and North America and a deadly killer in Africa, even in those with normal weight for age? Good nutrition gives ‘positive health’. There is a whole spectrum of deteriorating nutrition that gradually compromises physiological reserve and function. In severe malnutrition there has been dietary inadequacy severe enough to compromise every function of the body including its ability to resist disease agents. Just as good nutrition leads to positive health and resistance to disease, poor nutrition leads to ill health and susceptibility to many diseases. If a patient has HIV and dies from pneumonia we conceive of this as a death from HIV. If a malnourished child dies from pneumonia we conceive of this death as being due to the pneumonia itself. This is wrong. The commonest cause of immunodeficiency is nutritional deprivation – the underlying cause of death is really malnutrition. The stark differences between the perception of HIV and malnutrition as causes of death illustrate the neglect of nutrition; academic kudos, research effort and funding interest hardly exist.
