“The dreams of new mothers are similar all around the world. Some of the details may vary at the edges, but at the center is a good education,” Roger Thurow, senior fellow for global agriculture and food policy at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, writes in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s “Impatient Optimists” blog. “And critical to a good education is good nutrition, particularly in the 1,000 days from the time a woman becomes pregnant through the child’s second birthday,” he states, noting, “Any nutritional deficiencies — either from lack of food or a bad diet, or from parasites which deprive the body of the nutrients — delay the brain’s development, sometimes irreparably” (11/25).