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Maternal malnutrition can also factor into the poor health or death of a baby. Over 800,000 neonatal deaths have occurred because of deficient growth of the fetus in the mother's womb. [100] Deriving too much of one's diet from a single source, such as eating almost exclusively potato, maize or rice, can cause malnutrition.
The low-cost food that is generally affordable to the poor in affluent nations is low in nutritional value and high in fats, sugars and additives. In rich countries, therefore, obesity is often a sign of poverty and malnutrition while in poorer countries obesity is more associated with wealth and good nutrition.
Starvation is a severe deficiency in caloric energy intake, below the level needed to maintain an organism's life. It is the most extreme form of malnutrition.In humans, prolonged starvation can cause permanent organ damage [1] and eventually, death.
The environment of early humans shaped the evolution of ingestive regulatory mechanisms, starvation used to be a greater threat to survival than overeating. [3] Human metabolism evolved to store energy within the body to prevent death from starvation. Today, the environment now has an opposite effect on humans eating behaviors.
Starvation response in animals (including humans) is a set of adaptive biochemical and physiological changes, triggered by lack of food or extreme weight loss, in which the body seeks to conserve energy by reducing metabolic rate and/or non-resting energy expenditure to prolong survival and preserve body fat and lean mass.
Compulsive overeating, or emotional eating, is "the tendency to eat in response to negative emotions". [18] Empirical studies have indicated that anxiety leads to decreased food consumption in people with normal weight and increased food consumption in the obese .
A desire to lose weight is a common motivation to change dietary habits, as is a desire to maintain an existing weight. Many weight loss diets are considered by some to entail varying degrees of health risk, and some are not widely considered to be effective.
Diets, not just in terms of obesity but also of food composition, can have a major impact on underlying factors (see also #Aging below), with reviews suggesting i.a. that a 20-years old male in Europe who switches to the "optimal diet" could gain a mean of ~13.7 years of life and a 60-years old female in the U.S. switching to the "optimal diet ...