By David K. Shipler
Let’s give
the Republicans in Congress the benefit of the doubt. (Yes, I hear the groans,
boos, and catcalls.) But let’s be charitable for a moment and assume that they
had no idea, when they allowed severe cuts in food stamps to take effect today,
that they were damaging the brain development, lifelong cognitive capacity, and
therefore the future earning power of untold numbers of American children. If
they had known, surely the legislators would not have done what they did.
That may
sound like an overstatement until you look at the science or, more broadly, the
interaction between economics and biology.
The chain
reaction between early malnutrition and various intellectual and behavioral
deficits has been well established by neuroscience. Extensive documentation, in
readable form, can be found in a thick digest of studies published in 2000 by
the National Academy of Sciences, with the provocative title From Neurons to Neighborhoods. The
research has been updated since in scholarly papers and conferences.
Inadequate
iron and other nutrients during the critical periods of brain development—especially
the second and third trimesters of pregnancy and the first two years after
birth—damages the complex, overlapping processes of growth.
