Chessa Lutter
Senior Fellow, Food Security & Agriculture
Senior Fellow, Food Security & Agriculture
PhD, Nutritional Sciences, Cornell University
MS, Nutrition, Cornell University
BS, Natural Resources, University of California, Berkeley
Dr. Lutter shared her experience at her first job, what sparked her passion for nutrition, and a book that continues to influence her work.
My first job had nothing to do with nutrition, but rather my plans to become a forest ranger in the High Sierra’s of California where I grew up. One winter, as part of a biology project, I studied the mating behaviors of Belding ground squirrels in Yosemite. I spent a lot of time watching and waiting for something exciting to happen, which it did once mating season came around!
My life trajectory was changed when I lived in Guatemala as a volunteer after graduating from college. I had never seen malnourished children, stunted because of poor nutrition and preventable illnesses in early childhood, which could have been prevented by access to more nutritious foods and water and sanitation systems. I decided to change career aspirations and return to school to obtain a master’s and PhD degree in nutrition, with a focus on maternal and child nutrition. A summer collecting data in Costa Rica and a year in Colombia deepened my love for Latin America and commitment to global nutrition policies and programs.
The Children of Santa Maria Cauque: A prospective Field Study of Health and Growth by Leonardo Mata (1978) describes the life of children in an Indigenous community in Guatemala. Because of poor maternal nutrition, children at birth already suffered the consequences of poor nutrition in utero. Although they thrived on breastmilk early in life, once complementary foods of poor nutritional quality were introduced their growth took a turn for the worse. Compounded with frequent preventable infections and vaccine-preventable illnesses their risk of early death increased. The determinants underlying these immediate causes included lack of good governance – including political, financial, social, and public sector actions to enable children’s and women’s right to nutrition. The book is as relevant today as 45 years ago as RTI International works on programs to prevent malnutrition by addressing these underlying determinants.
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