L4 Sunday* August 26, 1984  
*	and Jeanne Goldberg HE RECENT recession has retaught us an old lesson: We desperately need a way to keep tabs on the</br></br>*	and Jeanne Goldberg HE RECENT recession has retaught us an old lesson: We desperately need a way to keep tabs on the nutritional health of America, especially high-risk groups like children, pregnant women and the elderly poor.</br></br>; ItÛªs an old lesson because a national nutrition-monitoring system was strongly recommended by the \Vhite House Conference on Food, Nutrition and Health way back in å£969.</br></br>*	Readers who remember the shocking discovery in the 1960s of Widespread, poverty-related hunger in the United States, the land of plenty, will also recall the heart-breakingly long struggle to get the Rational government to recognize and tackle the problem. Teams of health experts had to scour the nation evaluating reports and assessing each situation. Only then, when it grew clear that people from every ethnic group and region of the coun-try were affected, did Congress and the executive branch take heed.</br></br>When it came, action was thorough and bipartisan. And it worked: America was fed, from sea to shining sea. Not until 1981, when cutbacks in the federal food programs appeared along with unemployment in the recession, did the shadow of hunger fall upon us again.