Dr. Nevin S. Scrimshaw, a nutritionist who improved the health of millions of children in developing countries by creating low-cost vegetable-based foods for weaning infants, died on Friday in Plymouth, N.H. He was 95.
The cause was congestive heart failure, his daughter, Dr. Susan C. Scrimshaw, said.
To help protein-starved children in Central America, Dr. Scrimshaw created a gruel made of corn, sorghum and cottonseed flour that was nutritionally equivalent to milk. In India, he adapted the same principle to peanut flour and wheat. He then brought both products to market, where they sold for only pennies.
Working in Central America, Dr. Scrimshaw also helped eliminate endemic goiter in children — a swelling of the thyroid gland that can lead to mental retardation, deafness and dwarfism. The ailment is caused by a mother's iodine deficiency.
Dr. Scrimshaw found that European and American techniques to iodize salt were ineffective with the crude, moist salt of Central America, so he came up with a new iodine compound that proved effective there. He then worked with governments in the region to require iodation of all salt for human consumption.
Dr. Scrimshaw was a leader in research that helped prove that malnutrition and infection interact to produce far greater consequences than if only one or the other condition were present. He amassed evidence to demonstrate that chronic undernutrition was a greater threat to the third world than famine. And in his work in developing nations he emphasized the importance of iron and Vitamin A to the diet and helped start initiatives to distribute supplements.
"The bottom line is that he is probably unchallenged as the most important nutrition scientist and nutrition leader in the world," said Irwin Rosenberg, chairman of the Nevin Scrimshaw International Nutrition Foundation at Tufts University.
The foundation was just one organization that Dr. Scrimshaw helped build and run to address nutrition issues. In 1949 he founded the Institute of Nutrition of Central America and Panama, based in Guatemala City, and did much of his research there. He also started a world hunger program at the United Nations University in New York and a nutrition department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The World Food Prize Foundation honored him with its award in 1991, saying his "revolutionary accomplishments" had improved "the lives of millions."
Nevin Stewart Scrimshaw was born on Jan. 20, 1918, in Milwaukee, where his father, Stewart, was an economics professor at Marquette University. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in biology from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1938 and earned a Ph.D. from Harvard in physiology in 1941.
He entered the University of Rochester's medical school while participating in an Army medical corps training program. As part of his Army service he did his internship at Gorgas Hospital in the Canal Zone in 1945-46. He earned a master's in public health from Harvard in 1959.
Years later he said his medical school professors in Rochester had thought he was throwing away a promising career by concentrating on something as marginal, to them, as nutrition.
He was working in Central America in the 1950s when he witnessed an ailment known as kwashiorkor, a form of post-weaning protein malnutrition that plagued infants and children in developing countries. When he encouraged mothers to give their children milk, he found that they could afford to put only a teaspoon of milk in a glass of water.
Dr. Scrimshaw knew he had found his mission, but it took him seven years to complete it. He started with the realization that protein-rich soybeans do not grow in the tropics, and that sesame seeds and peanuts were too expensive. But cotton was abundant in Central America, and cottonseed meal was being exported for animal feed.
The meal, however, had a pigment that was toxic to humans. Dr. Scrimshaw and his colleagues found a way to eliminate the poisonous effect, and added vitamins and other nutrients.
Cooks were instructed to add water to the gruel, cook it for 15 minutes and flavor it with sugar, cinnamon, vanilla or chocolate. Called Incaparina — the name was taken from Incap, the acronym for his institute, and the Spanish word for flour, harina — it cost a penny a glass and spread throughout Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua.
During a famine in India in 1967, Dr. Scrimshaw made a similar food from peanut flour and wheat to combat kwashiorkor. That led to his research showing the synergistic relationship between malnutrition and infection.
In 1941 Dr. Scrimshaw married Mary Ware Goodrich, a nutritional anthropologist, with whom he worked closely throughout his career. She and his daughter survive him, as do his sons Norman, Nevin B., Steven and Nathaniel; eight grandchildren; four step-grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.
As a prominent nutritionist, Dr. Scrimshaw, who continued to ski and hike into his 90s, was often asked his views on issues ranging from snacking on chocolate to substituting two pieces of pie for lunch. He said he was gratified to learn that chocolate is actually good for you in limited amounts. As for the pie, he advised taking it easy the next day.
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