Title: Early Nutrition and Later Physical Work Capacity
Abstract: Relatively few studies have addressed the effects of past undernutrition, especially during the earliest years of life, on later physical performance.On the other hand, physical performance in presently undernourished individuals has been documented for over half a century, since the classic work of Keys et al.' on conscientious objectors during the Second World War.These studies demonstrated the deleterious effects of acute starvation on a broad array of physical performance measures in adult men.In the past 20 years several important studies have considered the impact of acute nutrient deficiencies-generally protein and energy2 and i r ~n ~. ~--o n physical work capacity, using laboratory measures of physical performance.Spurr and col-leagues5-' and Satyanarayana et a1.8 extended this line of investigation to examine the apparent effects of chronic or lifelong undernutrition on work capacity in adolescent boys. Studies in Colombia and IndiaSpurr et al. found that poor Colombian boys who were underweight for age but not for height had reduced oxygen uptakes at maximum exertion (measured as liters of oxygen consumed, or V0,max) compared to adolescents of the same age but of normal weight (Figure l)?By inference, these underweight boys are also stunted and, based on current understanding of the etiology of stunting,', probably suffered from undernutrition during the first 3 years of life.A more direct test of the influence of past early