AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 57:129-133( 1982)

Book Reviews SOCIAL AND BIOLOGICAL PREDICTORS OF

NUTRITIONAL STATUS, PHYSICAL GROWTH, AND NEUROLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT. Edited by Lawrence S. Green and Francis E. Johnston. Academic Press, New York, 1980. xv + 344 pp., figures, tables, references, index. $32.50 (cloth).

The papers in this volume deal with the an- thropometric assessment of nutritional status and the social and biological causes of proteinenergy malnutrition (P.E.M.). It is broad enough in scope to serve as a text for advanced courses in nutritional anthropology or public health nutrition. I t has reviews as well as results from empirical studies: both are, on the whole, of very high quality. This volume will serve as a useful reference for many years to come.

The review papers include, in order of their appearance : the definition, prevalence and causes of P.E.M. (Johnston); subcutaneous indicators of under- and overnutrition (Himes); human milk composition and the complexities of using growth data to evaluate nutritional status of bottle-fed versus breast-fed infants (Stini, Weber, Kemberling and Vaughn); the interrelation of diet and infectious disease in P.E.M. (Martorell); culturally conditioned behaviors tha t inadvertently worsen P.E.M. (Cassidy); and cross- cultural, environmental and genetic influences on motor development in infancy and childhood (Malina).

The empirical studies include assessment of overweight in white, Mexican American and native American infants in Arizona (Harrison and White); the influence of protein versus energy reserves on statural growth in rural Peru (Frisancho); bio-social correlates of unusually low weight-for-age preschool children in Massachusetts (Pollitt and Leibel); changes in social predictors of P.E.M. in Jamaica over a two- year period before and after a country-wide interventions (Marchione and Prior); the combined effects of iodine deficiency and P.E .M. on behavioral and physical development of children in highland Ecuador (Greene); reduction and identification of key ecological variables affecting nutritional status in rural Mexico (Johnston, Newman, Cravioto, DeLicardie and School); and maternal factors as mediators of fetal growth a t high altitude in Bolivia (Haas). A chapter by L. S. Greene presents conclusions drawn from the foregoing reviews and studies.

One of the stated purposes of the book is to “clarify issues related to the anthropometric assessment of nutritional status” and to evalu- ate the complex interraltionships between social and biological predictors of nutritional status with “novel research strategies and sophisticated statistical methods.”

Many of the studies refer to or use physical growth measurements as dependent vari- ables -i.e, as nutritional status indicators. In addition several consider nutrition influences on behavioral development (Malina, Greene). That behavior itself could exacerbate P.E.M. is considered by Cassidy. Of particular interest is Cassidy’s concept of “benign neglect” in con- nection with toddler malnutrition in the tropics. By this she means “childcare customs which predispose toddlers to malnutrition.” They are benign in the sense that parents are behaving in ways they believe are beneficial to their children, although from the biomedical viewpoint such practices may worsen child health.

Recurrent throughout the studies is the real- ization that diet and nutrition alone cannot predict P.E.M. For example, one of the vari- ables that best discriminated between failure- to-thrive infants and controls in Massachu- setts was the quality of mother-child inter- actions (Pollitt and Leibel). The ability to taste PTC, a genetic polymorphism, proved a more powerful predictor of developmental scales than more traditional indicators of wealth in an iodine-deficient community in Ecuador (Greene). An intriguing speculation regarding the reason for this is the apparent bitter taste of some goitrogens, chemicals that interfere with the utilization of iodine, in some local plant foods. Persons with a high taste acuity for bitter substances would more likely avoid such foods and would thereby avoid iodine de- ficiency, than persons with less such acuity. The example suggests gene-environment interactions in food choice.

A discouraging result in many studies is the small amount of variation in growth and devel- opmental indicators of health accounted for by the social and economic variables. In Ecuador only 2-4% of variation was explained by PTC taste and socioeconomic status after age of the child was held constant (Greene). The correla- tion of 31 epidemiological variables with height and weight for age in Jamaica rarely

0002-948318215701-0129$02.00 0 1982 ALAN R. LISS. INC.

130 BOOK REVIEWS

exceeded 0.20. However, when Marchione and Prior reduced the information in these vari- ables by factor analysis, five leading factors accounted for almost 30% of growth vari- ability. This suggests that composite tech- niques such as factor analysis may be more sensitive predictors of growth than single variables. Likewise, Pollitt and Leibel were able to classify correctly failure-to-thrive infants 82% of the time, using discriminant analysis of their social and nutritional vari- ables. Johnston and co-workers also use factor analysis to reduce some 40 ecological vari- ables. The following factors most accounted for variability in physical growth in rural Mexico: socioeconomic status and paternal and maternal size, each with path coefficients between 0.20 and 0.30 relating these factors to body length of preschoolers.

Some of these papers raise questions about traditional methodologies in Physical Anthro- pology. No doubt there is a correlation between birthweight and toddler weight, but Harrison and White’s analysis seems excessively com- plex and is not easy to follow. Frisancho uses upper arm muscle and fat measures of protein and calorie stores and finds an association of these with height in Peru. Is this a real nutri- tional effect or simply the result of the well- known intercorrelation of anthropometric vari- ables? One would like to have independent

measures of protein and calorie stores. Himes’ review contains warnings about the simplistic assumption that subcutaneous fat measure- ments reflect calorie nutritional status.

The use of multivariate techniques such as factor or principal components analysis to distill the essential information from a large number of social, economic and ecological vari- ables is certainly sophisticated, although psy- chologists have been using such methods for the past 50 years. The use of such techniques is only as good as the theory that underlies the selection of the predictor variables. Many of the review papers successfully develop theories regarding organism-environment interactions. A good example, though not the only one, is the work of Stini and co-workers who illustrate the difficulties is assessing the value of bottle feeding versus breast feeding by anthropometric criteria alone. The combina- tions of literature reviews and empirical studies makes this book particularly useful to behavioral scientists from a variety of backgrounds.

WILLIAM H. MUELLER The University of Texas Health Science Center School of Public Health Houston, Texas

BEACH TROOP OF THE GOMBE. By Timothy W. Ransom. Bucknell University Press, East Brunswick, New Jersey. 1981. 319 pp., figures, tables, appendices, bibliography, index. $35.00 (cloth).

This is a beautifully illustrated volume that portrays in detail baboon life at Gombe and the realities of field observation. Readers will be confused at first about some central features of the book, such as who is the “we” who are doing the study, but with patience, one will eventu- ally find most of the answers.

Ransom follows the research approach that has a long tradition in both ethology and anthropology. The early part of field work is used to familiarize himself with his study groups, to learn to recognize them indivi- dually, to know their daily round of activity, and to understand qualitatively how B and C troops at Gombe live. Sampling procedures

took two forms. The first type consisted of qualitative ad lib notes. Systematic focal animal sampling began in the second third of the study. The focal samples use a one-zero scoring procedure, with the length of the interval varying with the agelclass member- ship of the focal subject. These sampling techniques force an emphasis on qualitative comparisons with other studies, but Ransom does an admirable job of graphing and re- expressing his results to promote easy com- parison with other projects.

There are numerous places where careful editing would have been helpful. For example, index page numbers are sometimes slightly off, and the writer’s style makes us search for key information. Figure 8, which charts the use of various food species is misleading. I t con- flicts with Appendix 3. The apparent omission of the symbol for pith implies that all plant species are used on a year-round basis. Like-