Alan Berg

Who is Alan Berg?

Alan D. Berg is an American international development authority, most notable for his writing and advocacy which placed maternal and child nutrition on the international development agenda. Berg, from 1962 to 1965 was a member of the White House Food for Peace staff under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. As Assistant Director and then Deputy Director of Food for Peace, he also co-chaired the first White House Task Force on Nutrition that explored the possibility of a role for the government in international nutrition. Berg was then dispatched to India to head the U.S. government’s first international nutrition project and to coordinate international food aid during the Indian famine of 1967. It was as Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution that Berg wrote his groundbreaking book The Nutrition Factor: It’s Role in National Development – nominated for the National Book Award. The book and his earlier 1967 Foreign Affairs article “Malnutrition and National Development” cited the effect of poor nutritional status on mortality and on the cognitive development of survivors, underlining the serious consequences of malnutrition for economic growth in developing countries. His writing captured the attention of policy makers and is widely credited with establishing nutrition as an essential dimension of international development strategies. Berg then served as Senior Nutrition Adviser of the World Bank where he put into action many of the recommendations contained in his writing. As a result of Berg’s initiatives, the World Bank has become a leader among development partners in nutrition-related development assistance. During the 25 years of Berg’s tenure, Bank spending on nutrition, earlier negligible, totalled $2.1 billion, far more than the spending of all other donors combined.