FOOD OF RURAL CHILDREN 103 



An average of six or seven home visits could be made in one day. ^'lie 

 parents were invariably courteous, even if not particularly interested, and it 

 is believed that in no case was there any conscious attempt to deceive as to 

 the truth about the food habits and the dietary history of the children. 



For examining the teeth of the school children, a dental hygienist of expe- 

 rience was secured through the dental consultant of the State Department 

 of Health. A description of the methods she used will be found on page 129. 



The clinic sessions were in both instances held after the field work in the 

 town had been completed and the writer was not present either time. Ail 

 arrangements for tliem were made by the local nurse and a representative of 

 the staif of the Division of Tuberculosis. Except for obtaining the consent 

 to examination in cases where a home visit was made to get food history, the 

 writer was not directly connected with the work of the clinic. The reports of 

 the clinic physicians upon the individual children examined were copied later. 



PART II. FOOD HABITS AND DIETARY HISTORY 



Limitations of the Data 



Although in the home visits an effort was made to secure information upon 

 all tlie points listed in the blank, experience showed that it was not possible 

 to obtain data of any reliability upon the mother's diet during pregnancy, or 

 the diet of the child during the pre-school years. In general, the mothers 

 remembered the length of time the children had been nursed if breast fed; 

 but the usual answer to questions upon the child's diet after weaning was 

 eitiier "just about the same as he eats now" or "like the rest of the family." 

 In the 144 families surveyed, only 8 mothers were found, 3 in Carver and 5 in 

 Southwick, who had made a practice of straining or mashing vegetal)les for 

 small children or otherwise preparing their food by methods other than those 

 used for the food of the adults. In the same way, it was tiie exceptional 

 mother who had tried during pregnancy to eat those foods which might be 

 best for herself or the child; the customarj' answers as to antepartum diet 

 were "I don't remember anything different" or "I ate anything I wanted." 



L^pon only one point could anything approaching accurate information be 

 oiitained about the amounts of various foods eaten by the children during the 

 nre-school years. This was in relation to the amount of milk consumed. 

 Through questioning as to where the mother had been accustomed to buy 

 milk, the amount generally purchased, or the number of cows the family 

 kept, as well as the mother's recollection of the child's habits in using milk, 

 a reliable estimate of the child's milk consumption could be obtained. The 

 relation between the amount of milk used by the individual children during 

 the pre-school years and that of their present, or school period, diet is shown 

 in Chart 1 for Carver and Chart 2 for Southwick. It will be seen that in 

 botli towns there is positive correlation between the amounts of milk utilized 

 during the two periods. 



It has been considered unjustifiable to employ any of the more refined sta- 

 tistical methods in the handling of the material of this study, the inherent 

 inaccuracies of the original data not warranting such procedure. The diet 

 scores themselves and, as a result, the comparisons with conditions of teeth, 

 weiglit, and other elements in health status are all necessarily based upon 

 information which was dependent for its correctness upon the memories of 

 the mothers, resulting in many chances of error in individual cases. For this 

 reason no such statistical computations have been made, and a simpler mode 



