Malnutrition is not one thing. A child can be acutely underfed, chronically stunted, or deficient in a single vitamin or mineral while looking otherwise well — and each form is found in a different way. Plot a child below, then step through the three forms to see what a growth chart can, and cannot, reveal.
Plot the child, read the indices
Height-for-age
—z —
Weight-for-age
—z —
Reference lines approximate the WHO Child Growth Standards (boys, birth–5 y), plotted here for illustration; real screening uses full sex-specific tables. The cutoffs are −2 SD (moderate) and −3 SD (severe). A z-score is a population screening threshold, not a diagnosis of one child — a single point is a snapshot, read over time and in context. strong evidence
Three forms of malnutritionmove the sliders, then pick a form