Malnutrition connotes abnormalities of both over- and undernutrition. Developing countries are characterized by widespread poverty due to scarce economic resources or inequitable distribution of wealth across society. Although undernutrition states such as underweight, stunting and wasting in the population and hospital management of severe, third-degree clinical nutrition have been the classical concerns of developing-country nutrition, the process of nutrition transition has changed this one-sided balance. Today, a dual burden of deficient and excessive nutrition must be addressed in the community and in the clinic. While specific rates of undernutrition decline, population growth drives the number of undernourished children ever higher worldwide. Although not new in occurrence, public health attention to deficiencies of vitamin A, iodine, iron, zinc, vitamin D and vitamin B12 has taken new impetus. Overweight and obesity rates are rising in certain subpopulations of developing countries, and the metabolic syndrome is becoming established in low-income societies. It is important that the concepts and priorities for developing countries be continually updated, as attempted here, so that we do not latch onto the realities of past decades to create myths that obscure the contemporary evolution of malnutrition across the globe.

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