Recent reports on the relationship between nutritional deficiencies and reading disabilities include the following findings: many children are undernourished but not underfed; undernutrition may decrease learning time, interfere with learning at critical periods of development, and lead to motivational and personality changes; inadequate diet causes reduced responsiveness and attentiveness, easy fatigue, and inability to sustain prolonged effort; diet improvement results in better learning, fewer absences, and added social, physical, and educational benefits; and iron deficiency, found in 40% of the school age population, leads to poor attention span, apathy, listlessness, and poor scores on measures of intellectual growth. It has also been found that school lunch menus and vending machine foods may contribute to poor nutrition. Recommendations that are made for educators to remedy this situation include: integrate nutrition education into the reading curriculum; educate teachers, administrators, and parents in nutrition; give students input into cafeteria menu planning; and have the diet records of all students having chronic learning or behavioral problems professionally analyzed. (DF)