Primary occupation of most of the rural people in developing countries is agriculture. Primitive or near primitive state of farming practices, lack of communication and inefficient system of distribution of agricultural products and lack of purchasing power make rural people of the developing countries, particularly those of remote areas, predominantly dependant on their own produce. Food crops are sowed in a particular season, usually after the rain has set in and harvested after four or five months. In isolated rural areas of many such countries people have to depend for their food on the harvested food crops until the arrival of the next year's harvest. Not to speak of the surplus, many of the people cannot even raise sufficient food to enable them to pull on tolerably well in the later half of the agricultural year. The position of food supply remains so tight that crop failure, once in several years, may precipitate famine condition and starvation.
As the people in rural areas of many developing countries have to depend throughout the year for staple food, on the crops that are grown in a particular season and as the primitive or near primitive method of farming combined often with shortage of good farming land would not yield abundant or sufficient crops, seasonal hunger can be expected to be an endemic feature of the plight of the people living in many such places.
Presumably, because the shortage of food is expected to last only a few months of the year, not much attention has been paid to the nutritional significance of seasonal hunger and food scarcity. Even information on qualitative and quantitative seasonal variation of diet of the people in various developing countries is scant. Nevertheless seasonal hunger, even, if it is of three or four months' duration, may have serious nutritional implication. Dean (1955) reported that incidence of Kwashiorkor in Uganda fluctuated with the seasonal changes in the availability of millets and beans. Acute shortage of food of a few months' duration may show pronounced physical and physiological effects. Classical investigation of Keys & coworkers (1950) on semi-starvation of a few months' duration with human subjects under strictly controlled condition reveal many hitherto unknown facts. Under varied natural conditions how people physically and physiologically react to the cycle of relative abundance and acute food scarcity, how they adapt to low calorie diet and nutritional stress remains almost unknown. Under the stress of hunger tissue materials are expected to burn to meet the calorie deficiency overall physical effect under such condition would be the reduction of body weight. Culwick (1951) working on diet and nutrition in certain area of Sudan observed that average weight of men (average height 168 cm) taken in different seasons fluctuated between 54.8 kg and 57.4 kg and that of women (average height 156 cm) between 45.5 kg and 47.5 kg. Hunter (1967) working in north-east Ghana found that average weight of 120 men (height 174.75 cm came down from 59.9 kg in Dec-ember, a month of relative abundance to 55.4 kg in June, a month in the lean period. Loss of weight varied between 2% and 11%, with an average of 8%. Women in the surveyed area lost 3% to 10% of their body weights with an average of 7%.
Though some observations have been made on the seasonal variation of body weight (which however was not always correlated with actual consumption of foods) it appears virtually no attempt has been made on the seasonal variation in some other anthropometric dimensions and characters that are likely to result from the seasonal fluctuation in the quantitative intakes of foods. Of particular interest would be changes in skinfold thicknesses at various sites and circumferences of limbs such as upper arm, thigh and thorax. How the response of the body to the situation created by varying degrees of food scarcity that are present in the lean months in food deficit areas of developing countries affect the anthropometric dimensions and skinfold thicknesses remains practically unknown. Not to mention about studies on seasonal changes in body weight and other body measurements along with studies on quantitative changes in food consumption, in India, not much attention has been paid to investigate problem of the seasonal changes in diet itself though considerable amount of work on the diet of various Indian communities have been done. The only workers, as far as the authors are aware, who worked in the line are Aykroyd and Krishnan (1937) and Roy and Rao (1963). While the former workers, working in some villages of South India in two different seasons, one in July-August and the other in February failed to find any basic difference between the diets of the two seasons, the latter workers working in a village of West Bengal found considerable differences, even difference in the calorie consumption. However, the authors made no observation on the body weights and other physical measurements of the people surveyed. The Anthropological Survey for the last twentyfive years or so have been conducting dietary and some allied nutritional investigation in the principal tribal zones of India. The work done before 1970 has been summarised by Roy (1970). Partly because the forest-clad hilly regions inhabited by the tribal people become almost inaccessible in the rainy season which are usually the lean months and partly due to certain advantages, surveys have been usually conducted in November-March. Still enquiry on diet-ary habits showed that tribal people, at least in some areas, are subjected to periodic fluctuation in food consumption. In some remote tribal areas where even in the harvest months and in months immediately following the harvest enough food for all cannot be obtained, people, at least a major part of them, have to depend in the lean months to a considerable extent on roots, tubers, and wild fruits for sustenance (Roy 1969, Roy & Roy, 1970), Sometimes to starve off hunger they eat wild fruits and other things which may not be normally considered foods (Roy, Roy & Roy, loc cit). How far the dietary position deteriorates in the lean months and what are the consequent physical deterioration are not however known. Considering that investigation on the seasonal fall in food consumption and consequent physical deterioration of a primitive people living rather in isolation and entirely dependent on local produce and gathering would be highly interesting and important from nutritional point of view and would be linked with health and happiness of the people, the present investigation had been undertaken. Apart from this, studying morphological response of human body to seasonal hunger, it was thought, would provide some information on an interesting aspect of biology of man in relation to its environment.
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