Symposium: History and Legacy of The Interdepartmental Committee on Nutrition for National Defense (National Development)

Of the 20 North American surveys involving the ICNND,14 were conducted within the continental United States and 6 were done in partnership with the Institute for Central America and Panama (INCAP) in Guatemala City, Guate- mala, Central America. Three native populations were studied in Alaska in 1958 and in Montana in 1961. As the ICNND’sswan  song, 10 states, including 1 major city in the United States, were surveyed over a 24-mo period from June 1968 through July 1970. Each of these surveys was performed in partnership with federal, state, and municipal health agenciesor academic health universities. They all used the procedures developed by ICNND as published in the “Manual for Nutrition Surveys” (1,2) The findings and the recommendations were published as U.S. Government Printing Of (). In addition, the Central American surveys provided the basis for 45 scientific publications and 10 theses, which arelisted in the summary report (6) and one scientific publication concerning nutrition of Alaskan Eskimos (8). A recent search of PubMed found 52 citations to the Ten State Nutrition Survey. Nine report data from the survey (9–17) and the remainder cite the survey as a basis for research. These reports are a rich source knowledge concerning the nutritional health status of samples of the North American population from 1958 to 1970. They provide data on representative population samples about the nutritional health of the people and include carefully considered recommendations to address the nutritional problems. They gave direction to future public policy, to educational preparation, and to individual action (18). From these data came major changes in the commodity food, food stamp, and the school feeding programs, as well as the devel- opment of our WIC (Women Infants and Children) program.

The Alaska survey (3,8) was done in March 1958, when it was still winter and the annual dog race (Iditarod) was being

run. There were no mosquitoes. Over a 3-wk period, Eskimo and Indian villages were visited, and their native inhabitants

were examined during weeks 1 and 3. During week 2, the men were examined while participating in the annual National Guard Training Exercise at one of our U.S. Army military bases in Alaska. A total of 1500 people were examined, 53%

were women, children, and elders living in small Eskimo or Indian settlements. The remaining 700 were young men from

these communities who were attending National Guard training.

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