According to World Food Program (WFP) statistics, there are 1.02 billion undernourished people in the world today. This says that one in six people do not take healthy food and suffer from malnutrition. Malnutrition can be said as a serious problem facing by all-over the world, especially children and pregnant women. Malnutrition can be defined as the condition in which the person do not have sufficient vitamins, minerals, and all the necessary nutrients required to be healthy. This insufficient nutrients results in malnutrition and in turn causes health disorders. The main reason for malnutrition is inadequate diet. This problem is seriously found in Africa and parts of Asia. There are many organizations formed to reduce this malnutrition and many countries are volunteering many programs to avoid malnutrition. Malnutrition is not only caused by lack of food, but also obese people may be malnourished because they don 't take right kind of food i.e. food which lack in nutrients and minerals but the main cause for malnutrition in Africa is poverty. There are two types of malnutrition and they are chronic malnutrition and acute malnutrition. Chronic malnutrition is characterized by delayed growth in the child, and they do not have a healthy height for their age and acute malnutrition is characterized by child 's weight in relation to child 's height. Anemia, affects 74 per cent of children who have a serious effect in their growth. The three major nutrient deficiencies are Iodine, Iron and vitamin A deficiencies. Nutritional insufficiencies lead to concentration problems in children which results in poor performance at school. People with insufficient nutrients are more likely to have increased risk of diseases and also suffer from high infection rates. Malnutrition can also be caused by Famine, Drought and also climate change. Research shows strong evidence that adequate nutrition in the first 1,000 days of life (from conception to age two)
References: Article by World Food Program regarding Malnutrition. Retrieved from http://www.wfp.org/nutrition/how-wfp-fights-malnutrition Nordqvist. C (2014, September 26 ). Malnutrition. Retrieved from http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/179316.php Vanessa Thevathasan(2014, October 20). The Impact of Food Insecurity and Malnutrition on Children. The Huffington post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/child- malnutrition/