Abstract
The inimitable radio and television comedian, Jack Benny, never reached 40; he always claimed his age to be 39 years. Born in 1894 and deceased in 1974, Mr Benny in his 80 years on Earth never deigned to celebrate his 40th birthday. By contrast, the Food and Nutrition Bulletin (FNB) is celebrating its 2 score years with gusto within this anniversary volume, now completing three quarters of the trek through 2019. Unlike the effervescent reparations promise of postbellum agrarian reform by General William T. Sherman of “40 acres and a mule,” the FNB has indeed shown its promise by stubbornly plowing on, publishing in the field of global nutrition for now 4 decades. With the managing editor, Editorial Board, reviewers, and the staff at SAGE Publishers, the team at FNB has moved the anniversary issues across the digital and print platforms.
From the original submissions of our contributors, we have 9 articles in this September issue. In the present issue, the contributions cover the globe from Asia (Indonesia, Bangladesh, India), to Africa (Tanzania, Ghana), to Latin America (Yucatan, Mexico), and analysis addressing practices across geography as in the address of food aid options and global adolescent dietary selection. Breast feeding, complementary feeding, and fortification garner positions across the spectrum of articles, as do specific nutritional status problems of undernutrition (anemia, calcium deficiency) and overnutrition (obesity).
As noted earlier, the history of this journal includes 3 editors in chief (EICs). The FNB was founded by Nevin Scrimshaw with its inaugural issue in October 1978, and he became its initial EIC, 1 to be succeeded in 2004 by Irwin Rosenberg. 2 Despite the fact that I live and work in Guatemala, I assumed the reins of the Boston Editorial Office unofficially and de facto in March 2016 during a sabbatical of the second EIC; I got hitched to the wagon with official ascent to the chief editorship in March 2017. So, I graciously and humbly accept the moniker of the new kid on the masthead block. Unlike the former EICs, I do not have an era, but I am reminded of a line from a stock company musical comedy I attended in my youth: “Think about the future—don’t you wanna have a past?” So, I present the obligatory EIC Commentary entitled: Keeping the Current Editorship Current.
Since there is not a litany or legacy of publications within this short transition period into the third editorship of the journal, the selection for illustrative online material includes an anthology of FNB’s Greatest Hits—literally and figuratively. These represent an extended listing of the most cited papers from the journal over the years and the most frequently downloaded papers since the digital modality has come into force.
Not enough has been said thus far about the managing editors, other than our current stalwart, Dr. Corey O’Hara. This post began in the possession of Ms Edwina Murray, who took the minutia-based care from her role as the study dietician for metabolic balance studies in MIT undergraduate student volunteers, to the pages of FNB, sitting at the side of Dr Scrimshaw. In the Rosenberg era, we had the assistance of Ms Susan Karch and Michelle Badash in the ME position. We hail the solid contribution of these professionals for underpinning the flow of manuscripts and release of published issues. It takes a village.