It is a generally accepted premise among economists that people known what is good for them. They rationally allocate their limited income among different use such as food,clothes and education in such a way as to maximize their satisfaction. The economist is not normally concerned as to wheather people spend too much on one item or too little on another if that makes them happy. People spend their income according to their preferences among different goods and services and the relative prices of these items. A pronouncement by the economist or anybody else for that matter that people should spend more on one item and less on another is tantamount to an attempt to impose one’s own preferences on other people.
Then what is all the fuss about malnutrition? If people know what is good for them wouldn’t they allocate their income in such a way as to consume that amount of nutritive foods and non-foods that will maximize their satisfaction? The answer is yes, except that malnutrition is not measured in terms of satisfaction but in terms of protein-calorie intake or anthropometric measurements against certain standards. People are malnourished not because they misallocate their resources. It is rather because the combination of their incomes and preferences and the prices they face does not allow them to have better nutrition.
It must be remembered that people strive for maximum satisfaction not for maximum or even optimum nutrition. Otherwise, poor people would be spending all their income on nutritive foods and on nothing else which is contradicted by empirical observation.
If people are mainourished because they are too poor to afford more or better food then the concern and hence the policy should be directed primarily at poverty and secondarity at malnutrition.This is because malnutrition is merely a symptom and not a primary cause.In fact malnutritions in only one of the many manifestations of poverty. Others would include poor health,illiteracy and poor living conditions.
Development economists are concerned with poverty which they associate with inequality and underdevelopment. But is there a reason for the economist to pay special attention to malnutrition beyond his general concern with poverty? I believe there is. Firstly, malnutrition and poor health diminish the enjoyment of all kinds of consumption, even leisure time. Secondly, they reduce productivity, thus prepetuating poverty. Thirdly, alleviation of poverty is a very slow process while malnutrition is an urgent problem because of its debilitating and partly irreversible effects on health and productivity.Finally,even after people’s incomes are raised malnutrition may continue because of the persistence of eating habits acquired over many years in poverty. But this last point concedes that people may not know what is good for them at least temporarity.