Introduction

Malnutrition is the condition that results from taking an unbalanced diet in which certain nutrients are lacking, in excess (too high an intake), or in the wrong proportions. A number of different nutrition disorders may arise, depending on which nutrients are under or overabundant in the diet. The World Health Organization cites malnutrition as the greatest single threat to the world's public health. Improving nutrition is widely regarded as the most effective form of aid. Emergency measures include providing deficient micronutrients through fortified sachet powders, such as peanut butter, or directly through supplements. The famine relief model increasingly used by aid groups calls for giving cash or cash vouchers to the hungry to pay local farmers instead of buying food from donor countries, often required by law, as it wastes money on transport costs. Long term measures include investing in modern agriculture in places that lack them, such as fertilizers and irrigation, which largely eradicated hunger in the developed world. However, World Bank strictures restrict government subsidies for farmers and the spread of fertilizer use is hampered by some environmental groups

Causes
Major causes of malnutrition include poverty and food prices, dietary practices and agricultural productivity, with many individual cases being a mixture of several factors. Malnutrition can also be a consequence of other health issues such as diarrheal disease or chronic illness.,especially the HIV/AIDS pandemic Clinical malnutrition, such as in cachexia, is a major burden also in developed countries.

Poverty and food prices

As much as food shortages may be a contributing factor to malnutrition in countries with lack of technology, the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) has estimated that eighty percent of malnourished children living in the developing world live in countries that produce food surpluses. The economist Amartya Sen observed that, in recent decades, famine has always a problem of food distribution and/or poverty, as there has been sufficient food to feed the whole population of the world. He states that malnutrition and famine were more related to problems of food distribution and purchasing power.

It is argued that commodity speculators are increasing the cost of food. As the real estate bubble in the United States was collapsing, it is said that trillions of dollars moved to invest in food and primary commodities, causing the 2007-2008 food price crisis The use of biofuels as a replacement for traditional fuels may leave less supply of food for nutrition and raises the price of food. The United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler proposes that agricultural waste, such as corn cobs and banana leaves, rather than crops themselves be used as fuel.

Dietary practices
A lack of breastfeeding can lead to malnutrition in infants and children. Possible reasons for the lack in the developing world may be that the average family thinks bottle feeding is better. The WHO says mothers abandon it because they do not know how to get their baby to latch on properly or suffer pain and discomfort. Deriving too much of one's diet from a single source, such as eating almost exclusively corn or rice, can cause malnutrition. This may either be from a lack of education about proper nutrition, or from only having access to a single food source. Many tend to think malnutrition only in terms of hunger, however, overeating is also a contributing factor as well. Many parts of the world have access to a surplus of non-nutritious food, in addition to increased sedentary lifestyles. In turn, this has created a universal epidemic of obesity. Yale psychologist Kelly Brownell calls this a "toxic food environment where fat and sugar laden foods have taken precedent over healthy nutritious foods. Not only does obesity occur in developed countries, problems are also occurring in developing countries in areas where income is on the rise Agricultural productivity Food shortages can be caused by a lack of farming skills such as crop rotation, or by a lack of technology or resources needed for the higher yields found in modern agriculture, such as nitrogen fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation. As a result of widespread poverty, farmers cannot afford or governments cannot provide the technology. The World Bank and some wealthy donor countries also press nations that depend on aid to cut or eliminate subsidized agricultural inputs such as fertilizer, in the name of free market policies even as the United States and Europe extensively subsidized their own farmers. Many, if not most, farmers cannot afford fertilizer at market prices, leading to low agricultural production and wages and high, unaffordable food prices

Comparison of Malnutrition in Urban and rural communities

The urban environment is also generally more salubrious. Furthermore, the development of road and rail links ensures that urban populations receive a fairly regular and abundant supply of foodstuffs. Another general presumption in the literature is that urban populations generally have an advantage over rural people in the availability of water supply, housing and sanitation, and other areas of social programming that directly affect health and mortality. Overall, cities are perceived as having a concentration of wealth, power and western culture, together with services and modern equipment, whilst villages spell out poverty, underdevelopment and lack of services urban differentials in health in less-developed countries, particularly the extent to which they are explained by contextual or compositional factors. Against this background, it is the purpose of this study to contribute to improving our understanding of differentials in child undernutrition by place of residence, and shed light on the factors underlying these differences. The study examines how wide rural-urban gaps in child malnutrition are over time, and investigates whether child health is intrinsically better in urban areas given comparable socioeconomic conditions. Specifically, the objective of this work is to test the following hypotheses: (i) urban-rural differentials in child malnutrition have declined over time; and (ii) they are fully accounted for by the socioeconomic status of communities and families1. This latter question conveys an important policy implication, since it relates to whether health differences across urban and rural areas simply reflect inequalities between socioeconomic groups or, more significantly, suggest a contextual effect of place of residence in shaping the health of populations child undernutrition in developing countries is usually a consequence of poverty and its attributes of low family income, large family size, poor education, poor environment and housing, inadequate access to foods, to safe water and to health care services This study focuses on malnutrition among children since it is one of the major public health Concerns in developing countries, where it represents both a cause and a manifestation of poverty