Undernutrition and mental development.

Childhood malnutrition is currently diagnosed by comparing children’s anthropometric measurements to the median of international references (NCHS [1]) for their age and sex, and expressing the results in standard deviation scores (SDs) [2]. Moderate underweight is weight < 2 SDs, moderate stunting is height < 2 SDs, moderate wasting is weight-for-height < 2 SDs and severe is < 3 SDs. All these conditions are usually termed protein energy malnutrition (PEM), however this term is misleading because it is well recognised that various micronutrient deficiencies are usually also present [3]. Therefore, in this paper we will refer to undernutrition rather than PEM. There are several causes of undernutrition including inadequate dietary intake, due to lack of sufficient and/or suitable quality of food, frequent infections, particularly diarrhoea, also contribute.