Malnutrition

Abstract

In the field of public health, there is an increasing awareness of the fact that health behavior is not merely determined by biologic and genetic factors but also by a range of environmental and social determinants (Schultz & Northridge, 2004). Nutrition is a fundamentally important contributor to health, and it is implicated in many diseases relating to both over- and undernutrition or as simply put mal nutrition meaning wrong or incorrect nutrition. Malnutrition is the outcome of a complex interaction of many factors of which unhealthy diet is usually the primary cause. Unhealthy diet in turn is the result of numerous detrimental environmental, social, biologic, genetic, cultural, political, and/or behavioral factors which impact on the body with undesirable health consequences. Poor health in turn can affect the quality-of-life at any phase of the life cycle.