Pundits|Kristoff on Micronutrients for Pregnant Women

In today’s post World’s Healthiest Food, Nicholas Kristof interviews David Dodson, who with his wife Stephanie sold their 300-employee waste company and founded Project Healthy Children, an aid group that fights micronutrient deficiencies in Honduras (site of Kristof’s recent visit) and other poor countries.

Children in developing countries suffer from major physical traumas and debilitating birth defects, even having 10 to 15 points permanently shaved off their IQs, because their mother’s lack vital nutrients during pregnancy.

Kristoff explains the details.

Other groups offering aid of micronutrients to women are Helen Keller International and Vitamin Angels. I believe that to date American aid hasn’t included micronutrients, perhaps because they’re of little value to men and women haven’t been a direct focus of American aid, except to insure they don’t have access to birth control of any other programs that might undermine America’s pro-abstinence programs.