Malnutrition is often lost in discussions around the subject of hunger, especially in the context of the discourse to "end world hunger", or to "feed the world". These blurred definitions only serve to perpetuate the inadequate response to malnutrition. It is crucial to distinguish between malnutrition and hunger, as malnutrition requires responses that go beyond food aid.

Hunger is usually taken to mean a deficiency in caloric intake - any person, whose daily diet gives fewer than the defined minimum of 2,100 kcal, is considered as suffering from hunger, or undernourished. The typical response to hunger is food aid that supplements a person's daily caloric intake.

Malnutrition, however, is not merely the result of too little food. It is a pathology caused principally by a lack of essential nutrients. Most food aid is an inadequate response to malnutrition as it either delivers insufficient amounts of essential nutrients or delivers them in a way that they are destroyed by cooking or not taken up properly by the body.

Malnutrition is associated with half of all deaths in children under the age of five each year. The risk of death is particularly high for children with severe acute malnutrition, up to 20 times higher than for a healthy child.