Nutrition: An Urge for Argo

"When I'm pregnant, it's just like taking dope," said the Negro woman bearing her ninth child at the District of Columbia General Hospital in Washington. "I can hardly wait to get home so I can get some more starch," she added, referring not to starchy foods but to laundry starch. "Sometimes I'll eat two or three boxes a day."

To their astonishment, Northern doctors have lately discovered that eating laundry starch is all the rage among Negro women—especially pregnant women—in many Northern-city slums. At D.C. General Hospital, Chief Obstetrician Dr. Earnest Lowe estimates that up to one-fourth of his patients...