The brainpower of entire nations has diminished because of a shortage of the right vitamins, and slipping nutrients into people's food seems to be the only solution, a new UN survey says. \nTo fight the problem, the UN is prescribing a whole pantry of artificially fortified foods: soy sauce laced with zinc, "super salt" spiked with iron, cooking oil fortified with vitamin A. \nDeficiencies in these vitamins are having alarming effects in developing countries, even ones where people generally have enough to eat, said the study, released Wednesday. \nA lack of iron lowers children's IQs by an average five to seven points, the report said. A deficiency in iodine cuts it 13 more points, said Venkatesh Mannar, president of the Micronutrient Initiative, which produced the report along with the United Nations Children's Fund. Birth defects increase when mothers don't get enough folic acid, and a shortage of vitamin A makes children 25 percent to 30 percent more likely to die of disease. \n"So ubiquitous is vitamin and mineral deficiency that it debilitates in some significant degree the energies, intellects, and economic prospects of nations," the study said. \nIt looked at 80 developing countries representing some 80 percent of the world's population. It found: \n? Iodine deficiency has lowered the intellectual capacity of almost all of the nations by as much as 10 to 15 percentage points. It causes 18 million children a year to be born mentally impaired. \n? Iron deficiency in adults is so widespread that it lowers the productivity of work forces -- cutting the GDP in the worst-affected countries by 2 percent. \n? Deficiencies in folic acid -- a nutrient needed for tissue growth, especially in pregnant women -- causes approximately 200,000 severe birth defects every year in the 80 countries. \n? About 40 percent of the developing world's people suffer from iron deficiency, 15 percent lack adequate iodine and as many as 40 percent do not get enough vitamin A. \nIn most Western countries, governments have fought the problem with additives: iodine is sprayed onto salt before packaging, vitamin A is added to milk and margarine, and flour is enriched with niacin, iron and folic acid. \nBut that doesn't work in countries where governments are weak, food is not processed in big mills and diets are based on a single starchy staple like rice or corn. \nOther health experts said the UN findings echoed other studies showing the link between intelligence and nutrition. \n"This is absolutely happening," said Ronald Waldman, a professor of clinical health at Columbia University. "Vitamin deficiency is a disease, and when people have this disease they don't reach their ideal mental potential." \nWhile some deficiencies, like lack of vitamin A, can be corrected, "If you grow up and your IQ has suffered from iodine deficiency, it's not going to be reversible," Waldman said. \nFurthermore, things are getting worse in some countries, the report said. The percentage of salt that is iodized has slipped to 25 percent in some Central Asian countries and to 50 percent in India, the country with the largest number of iodine deficient people, the report said. \nGetting vitamins to people other ways just doesn't work, researchers said. In the US, most people ignored government pleas to take more folic acid, a nutrient found in nuts -- until the government started putting it in flour in 1998. The result: cases of spina bifida and anencephaly, two serious birth defects, dropped by at least 20 percent. \n"It becomes an issue of compliance. If people have to eat a vitamin pill every day, a lot of them won't do it," Mannar said. \nThe report urges countries to step up enrichment in foods that people don't make themselves -- things like soy sauce, cooking oil or margarine. It also endorses a new kind of salt fortified with iron in "microcapsules." \nThe most disturbing gap between countries with good and poor nutrition is in intelligence, said Cutberto Garza, a Cornell University professor who also leads the nutrition program at United Nations University. \n"A difference of fie to seven IQ points doesn't sound like a lot, but you have to look at the tail ends of the [statistical] curve," Garza said. "You are significantly reducing the number of gifted people and increasing the number of people with mental incapacities."
The images of a besuited Ferdinand Marcos Jr, clad in a top hat and leaning nonchalantly on a Rolls-Royce, dating from his time in Britain in the 1970s, are as you might expect from the playboy scion of a kleptocratic dictator. Yet as the Marcos family returns to power in the Philippines after a landslide presidential victory by Marcos Jr, he is facing calls to stop misrepresenting the circumstances of his studies at the University of Oxford. The university has confirmed that he did not complete his degree in philosophy, politics and economics after enrolling in 1975. “According to our records, he did
A glimpse of a possible Picasso in the home of Imelda Marcos filmed during a visit by her son after his presidential election win has set off a flurry of speculation in the Philippines, where the family that once plundered billions is set to return to power. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr, the son and namesake of the late dictator, won a landslide victory in Monday’s presidential election, an outcome that has appalled those who survived his father’s regime. Images released by the family showed Marcos Jr visiting the home of his mother, who had displayed Picasso’s Femme Couche VI (Reclining Woman VI),
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CALIBRATED RESPONSE: The city-state has learned from its past experiences of dealing with COVID-19 variants to assess the situation and the risks, the transport minister said Singapore will strive to keep its borders open and stay connected to the rest of world even if a new variant of COVID-19 emerges, Singaporean Minister for Transport S. Iswaran said on Wednesday. The city-state has learned from its past experiences of dealing with COVID-19 variants, Iswaran said in an interview with Bloomberg News. When the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 hit, Singapore did not backtrack on its reopening plans, but rather decided to wait and see how things panned out, he said, adding that the response was different versus the Delta outbreak. “We’ve all learned to adapt,” Iswaran said on the sidelines