Infant mortality is in the U.S. almost double than in the Netherlands, where high-quality, state-supported medical services are easily available to all people.

COMPARED with many other peoples, Americans do not live very long. Though the U.S. leads the world in most measures of material success—personal income, production, profits—in life expectancy it ranks only 24th for men and ninth for women. American men live an average 67.1 years,* and American women…

Last week millions of fish died in the river Rhine, victims of the worst case of pollution in the river’s history. Germans failed to sound the alarm sooner. The Dutch were furious.

The Rhine is one of the world’s most scenic and storied waterways. It was a commercial route before Christ, and Julius Caesar first spanned it with a bridge in 55 B.C. Along its picturesque banks, flanked by medieval castles, are Drachenfels, the cliff where Siegfried slew his dragon, and the…

Unilever introduced an improved version of Planta’s margerine. But as Planta’s sales curves soared, Dutch doctors began getting patients troubled by a strange and painful itch.

Early last month, when a splashy advertising campaign urged Dutchmen to “taste the improvement” in their favorite spread, thousands of housewives obediently followed directions. Most of them agreed that there was indeed something different about the new version of their old friend Planta, the good-eating margarine made by Van den…

Five year old Joke Haanschoten swallowed a piece of a radioactive needle, that was used to treat her infected adenoids that threatened to block a Eustachian tube.

“Mortal danger: forbidden to set foot here,” read the police signs around the Haanschoten family’s modest little house in the Netherlands town of Putten (pop. 12,000), south of the Zuider Zee. To enforce the order, barbed wire was strung around three sides of the house and its yard, and…

While the Nazis were systematically starving their captives. Allied chemists perfected a special restorative food for humans who are so starved that they cannot digest ordinary fare.

While the Nazis were systematically starving their captives. Allied chemists perfected a special restorative food for humans who are so starved that they cannot digest ordinary fare. The food, of powdered amino acids, is made from milk, meat, eggs, beans and fish, and is called protein hydrolysate. It may be…

About a third of the ducks in The Netherlands are carriers of Salmonella. According to Dutch law, duck eggs cannot be used in commercial preparation of food or drink.

Soldiers who like duck eggs had better restrain their appetites when they invade Europe or the Dutch East Indies. Duck eggs often contain a variety of Salmonella —bacteria which cause paratyphoid fevers and intestinal disorders.

Many European duck eggs are infected. About a third of the ducks in The Netherlands…

A new root vegetable called “wobbie,” a cross between a carrot and a beet, with three to four times more vitamin C than either, is already under wide cultivation in The Netherlands.

Food-front news reported last week:

>New strains of cabbage that have up to twice as much vitamin C as the old varieties have been developed at the Department of Agriculture’s regional laboratory in Charleston. S.C., but seed is not likely to be available to gardeners for several years.

>A new…