Revisiting ‘The Great Protein Fiasco” and the Internationalization of Kwashiorkor Research in Uganda, 1945-1973

With the 1974 publication of “The Great Protein Fiasco,” more than two decades of research on protein malnutrition as “the most serious and widespread problem in the world” became the one of the greatest embarrassments of nutritional science and international public health. As an extension of a larger historical investigation of nutritional science in Uganda, the paper examines the scientific research underlying the global emphasis upon protein malnutrition. While many interpreted the “Great Protein Fiasco” as an indictment of the biomedical science implicating protein, I argue that it was the interpretation of that evidence in the international arena that “The Great Protein Fiasco” called into question. Revisiting the assessment that the scientists “got it wrong” allows for a more accurate appraisal of how “erroneous worldwide generalizations” together with narrow definitions of the problem shaped an extensive and expensive international public health program that aimed to close the so-called “worldwide protein-gap.” Through an examination of WHO, FAO and UNICEF reports, scientific publications and oral and archival evidence gathered in Uganda and the UK, the local and the international are kept in a single frame in order to recast “The Great Protein Fiasco” as a cautionary tale emerging from a formative period in the growth of global science and medicine.