Partially refusing early nutrition interventions in Bhutan

Shivani Kaul is the winner of the 2025 Graduate Student Paper Award from the Association for the Anthropology of Policy (ASAP) . This piece is drawn from her award-winning paper.

Credit: Shivani Kaul, 2023

A health worker in southern Bhutan demonstrating how to use the anthropometric measuring device.

“ How to raise the world’s IQ .”

“ Cheap fixes could help 450m people stand taller and think quicker .”

Recent headlines in The Economist reflect a growing policy concern about global child malnutrition, particularly stunting during the “First 1000 Days” of life. For many global health policymakers, infant stunting—when a child is much shorter than the standardized height-for-age—signals not only compromised health but lost future IQ and economic productivity. In this framing, a child’s height becomes a proxy for national development .…