A child is UNDERWEIGHT when his weight is below -2 SD for his age based from the WHO growth chart. In 2019, 14% of children in Malaysia are underweight.

Adequate nutrition is important to achieve your child’s growth and development potential.

There are many causes why a child can be underweight, but the main reason is usually a child’s DIET. Other causes would be health or emotional problems.

Usually when a child appears small and I ask about the child’s dietary habit, the parent will usually say – ‘He eats very little!! And when I want to give more, he will refuse!

Another thing is that, when it comes to helping a child to gain weight, parents are usually concerned about selecting the BRAND of FORMULA MILK which will be the best to help their child gain weight.

However, rather doing that, why don’t you try to MODIFY your child’s DIET instead!

If you can’t increase the AMOUNT of food you child can take each time, you can try to increase the NUMBER OF MEALS in a day and add more CALORIES and PROTEIN content to each meal.

For example, you can try adding cheese, oil (olive, coconut, sesame), butter and also full cream milk into your child’s diet.