Yes, in many places nutrition is a low-hanging fruit. My own favorite example is iodine supplementation, http://www.practicalethicsnews.com/practicalethics/2008/12/the-perfect-cog.html but vitamins, long-chained fatty acids and simply enough nutrients to allow full development are also pretty good. There is some debate of how much of the Flynn effect of increasing IQ scores is due to nutrition (probably not all, but likely a good chunk). It is an achievable way of enhancing people without triggering the normal anti-enhancement opinions.
The main problem is that it is pretty long-term. The infants we save today will be putting their mark about two or more decades hence—they will not help us much with the problems we face before then. But this is a problem for most kinds of biological enhancement; developing it and getting people to accept it will take time. That is why gadgets are important—they diffuse much more rapidly.
Yes, in many places nutrition is a low-hanging fruit. My own favorite example is iodine supplementation, http://www.practicalethicsnews.com/practicalethics/2008/12/the-perfect-cog.html but vitamins, long-chained fatty acids and simply enough nutrients to allow full development are also pretty good. There is some debate of how much of the Flynn effect of increasing IQ scores is due to nutrition (probably not all, but likely a good chunk). It is an achievable way of enhancing people without triggering the normal anti-enhancement opinions.
The main problem is that it is pretty long-term. The infants we save today will be putting their mark about two or more decades hence—they will not help us much with the problems we face before then. But this is a problem for most kinds of biological enhancement; developing it and getting people to accept it will take time. That is why gadgets are important—they diffuse much more rapidly.