Having met a young woman last night at a party who is attending Boston University, it’s only fitting that today I should run across an article from BU’s latest alumni publication, the Bostonian. The article, entitled The Hidden Costs of Malnutrition details the research done by Janina Galler into the effects of malnutrition upon children in Barbados.

Galler’s research over the last 30 years has shown that malnutrition did not seem to impact children’s IQs as much as originally expected. But it did show was that children who suffered malnutrition in early childhood were four times more likely to develop ADHD than those who did not. The study followed children throughout their childhood and found that those with early malnutrition didn’t do as well on high school entrance exams.
Barbados proved a good place for such research, since the society is socioeconomically homogeneous. In the population that Galler studied beginning in the 1970s, over 80% of their household income when to food and shelter. When sugar cane market when low, the rates of malnutrition among these families skyrocketed. In recent decades, Barbados’ economy has expanded and malnutrition is no longer a problem.

Galler’s studies put an interesting twist on post-institutional effects, and provide some food for thought (no pun intended) to those adopting children who are malnourished. While there are some adoption professionals who believe that the higher incidence of ADHD among the adopted population can be explained by misdiagnoses of trauma as ADHD, it could be ADHD brought on by poor nutrition during early brain development.

In our case, it was obvious that LuLu was severely malnourished. She was 20 months old but had never had solid food. Child development literature teaches us that babies between 8 to 20 months often have nutritional needs that out pace the nutrition from breast milk (or just formula for that matter). It is then that doctors advice parents to start feeding the infant cereals, then moving on to other foods.

Giving LuLu the nutrition she needed did wonders for her physically. She quickly started walking and teeth started erupting in her mouth like crazy. But I do have to wonder what role malnutrition played in LuLu current emotional and developmental struggles.

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