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The WHO, UNICEF, and the World Bank monitor several measures of growth and weight in children under 5 years of age globally [1, 5]. These measures help to identify and track problems of inadequate (wasting, stunting, and underweight) and excess nutrition (overweight and obesity), and because the measures are standardized, they also allow for comparisons across countries and over time. They are used by the WHO and UNICEF in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and the World Food Program (WFP) to monitor progress towards ending hunger, ensuring access to food, and eliminating all forms of malnutrition around the world [6].

Wasting refers to low weight for height, and usually results from recent and severe weight loss stemming from lack of food, diarrhea, or other infectious disease. Stunting is low height for age and is the result of chronic or recurring undernutrition associated with poverty, frequent illness, and inadequate feeding and care during early life. Underweight describes children who have a low weight for age. In addition to these issues of undernutrition, many children around the world are also facing excess body weight for height resulting in overweight or obesity due to overconsumption of energy relative to energy requirements.

Wasting affects 7.3% of the global young child population, or about 49.5 million children under the age of 5 years [5]. More than 60% of wasted children worldwide live in Southern or Southeastern Asia (61.2%) and another 28.3% live in Africa. Stunting currently affects 21.9% of children less than 5 years of age (149 million children), and while this is lower than the 32.5% in 2000 [5], progress is still too slow to reach global nutrition targets of 14.6% by 2025 [6]. Overweight is only reported for North America, Asia, Africa, and Latin America, where it affects 5.9% of young children, amounting to 40.1 million [5]. Rates of overweight in these regions have increased from 4.9 to 5.9% since 2000. Overweight children are found across all income classifications, though the highest proportions are among middle-income countries [5]. These data highlight that nutritional issues continue to affect our children (and families) globally; biggest problems of world hunger occur in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, and rates of overweight and obesity are growing in all regions and all age groups [6].