Parents should pay attention to the amount of food their children eat on a daily basis, but also to a balanced and varied diet. If a child has poor eating habits such as picky eating, partial eating or overeating, malnutrition may result and because early malnutrition does not have typical clinical signs, it can easily be missed, resulting in children with malnutrition that may have progressed to a moderate level by the time it is diagnosed.
In addition, malnutrition can be secondary to certain chronic diseases and if a child is malnourished, he or she therefore needs to be checked in hospital for chronic underlying diseases affecting feeding or digestion and metabolism.