"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.
The 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."
The 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.
"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."
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