Every human being must eat to continue living, and must eat well so as to be healthy. Consequently these conditions of being alive and healthy ,depend on how much we eat, and what we eat.

If the individual has no access, or nearly no access to food, his body isn’t fed , does not maintain itself , this individual deceses, dies. You may have a notion of what this feels like when you give yourself a very big interval in between meals: your body gives signs such as dizziness, stomachache, headache, weakness, and ill feeling. This is a protest, or a request for food. If this food does not come, or does not come quickly enough, or too little food comes and then doesn’t come once again, one becomes weaker and weaker, feeble and then dies. “Dies of weakness” as is popularily said.

If an individual under 6 years of age, has access to food, but in an unsufficient amount so as to be able to provide for the need of maintenance and development of the body, he will have less serious consequences (ex: height) and /or more serious ones that may remain for the rest of his life (ex: brain connections that do not develop with all its potencial, causing low concentration levels, difficulty in learning). Whoever is not fed sufficiently, he will be the object of numerous infections and affections, independent of age. And soon malnutrition undermines the organism which doesn’t maintain itself properly, losing its defenses. As an example we can mention those people who eat small portions of unvaried food , such as beans with manica flower and only once in a very while they do drink milk or eat meat, or also sometimes spending one or two days without food.

Thousands of these people die of “causes” such as pneumonia, or some organic deficiency, when they are actually dying of lack of food, that is: lack of food is the generating factor of the causes that lead to death. The definition of malnutrition given by The World Heath Organisation is that malnutrition corresponds to a series of pathologic conditions; sicknesses which rise from a deficiency of apportion, transport and ultilization of the nutrients by the cells of the organism. Malnutriton has its largest number of victims among the children who are still breast or bottle fed and children of pre-school age.
Source: Sawaya 1997

Malnutrition is divided in three stages: light, moderate and serious. As a concept, subnutrition is the stage of malnutrition which is called “light “. For the fact that subnutrition is the lighter form of the consequence of hunger, it tends to be underestimated, since its consequences are less severe in short term. This is a very serious mistake, for subnutrition is an alarm signal which enables us to avoid worse consequences. This is the entrance door for a greater suscebility to infeccious deseases.

To know more about starvation, malnutrition and subnutrition we recommend the site of this program www.desnutricao.org.br

Info on starvation, waste and malnutrition
The various Faces of Brazil
More info on waste and its consequences
More info on starvation and its consequences.
Conclusion
What is starvation, malnutrition and subnutrition