Breast Feeding

I chose to take a closer look at the area of nutrition and malnutrition. I believe this is a huge part of development and should be taken into account when researching all aspects of childhood development. The signs of malnutrition show themselves in tooth decay, childhood diseases, poor reflexes and muscle tone, delayed development, lack of color to skin, lower weight or obesity, poor performance in school, brittle hair and dry skin. This list can continue of the symptoms of malnutrition. The worst part is malnutrition can be prevented. The real question is can education and services be effective enough to help fix this serious problem? There are many services and agencies galore in the United States that are there to help people who need it, malnutrition is huge issue. Many times the money given is used for nutritionally void food such as white bread, soda, cookies and chips etc. This is not the type of diet that will help children out of the dangers of malnutrition. The website I found states that India is like the ground zero for malnourished children over any place else on the planet. "South Asia, in fact, has the greatest concentration of deadly acute malnutrition on the planet, while India alone accounts for 54% of all under nutrition- related child deaths worldwide." This is caused by several factors: -widespread poverty -endemic hunger -rapid population growth -pockets of weak governance -poor health systems and unreliable national indicators All of these factors are compounded by issues of the caste system (which doesn't formally exist any more but is still very prevalent in every day life), ethnicity, religion and gender. Information on India retrieved from: