Neglected Areas of Nutrition Research 18:3 



themselves. Among the 13,000,000 older people in the 

 United States, only a negligible fraction are contributing to 

 studies of their own welfare. There are a few bright spots of 

 old age research such as the Baltimore City Hospital and 

 Nathan Shock's group or the Moose Lodge in Orange Park, 

 Florida. 



Under the New York Department of Mental Hygiene are 

 more than 30,000 older people being given little more than 

 custodial care. One attempt was made several years ago to 

 assemble 900 of the undisturbed older patients in one hospital 

 to serve as a research centre, but this had to end when the 

 hospital was taken over by the air force and the commissioner 

 who had such extensive vision was replaced in the adminis- 

 tration. 



Furthermore, under departments of mental hygiene are 

 thousands of feeble minded patients who are destined to 

 remain wards of the state for the whole of their lives. Most of 

 these could very well be participants in studies of ways to 

 improve their own well-being even if they could not appreciate 

 what they were doing. 



An example of a crude but profitable experiment that we 

 did some years ago with the spastic feeble-minded may be 

 worthwhile. The commissioner at that time asked us to see 

 if we could develop some mush type food for the spastic 

 children because so much time was taken in feeding them the 

 institutional diet. As I observed the feeding of these bed- 

 ridden patients I came to realize they were getting a very 

 l)oor diet because the attendants found it easy to give mashed 

 potatoes, macaroni and carbohydrates but difficult to feed 

 vegetables and meat. The salvation from bad malnutrition 

 in this case was the daily allowance of whole milk. 



After making a number of test mixes we found that one 

 containing cooked potato flour, whole w^heat biscuits, dry 

 skim milk, wheat germ, dried egg, brewer's yeast, margarine 

 with a small amount of alfalfa meal and salt proved very 

 satisfactory. This proved simple to prepare with hot water 

 and easy to feed. No careful study could be made of these 



