Focusing on America's self-knowledge about its nutritional health, this report deals with the availability of nutrition evaluation and counseling to individuals and the adequacy of the national nutrition monitoring system. Bureaucratic and political problems of applying nutritional health considerations to food policy are also examined. Nutrition education outside the medical setting, the status of nutrition research, and the nutritional quality and safety of food are topics left to further inquiry. Among the topics discussed in the introduction are the diseases of overabundance, undernutrition, nutrition knowledge, food production and nutrition policy, and control of nutrition policy. Chapter 1 shows that the medical profession has been extremely slow to take nutrition seriously. Chapter 2 discusses the failure to establish an effective nutrition monitoring system in the United States and the consequences of this failure. Chapter 3 describes the random efforts of HEW to coordinate nutritional health policy. Recommendations are made for areas covered in each chapter. (Author/AM)