Dietician Dr Hazreen Abdul Majid from Universiti Malaya said this is because they would miss out on important and balanced meals usually served in kindergartens, which are now forced to close.

“Normally, many young children will have their breakfast in school and that gives them energy and nutrition.

“If they are at home, some parents might not be able to buy food if they are not able to work or because of other financial factors.”

Hazreen said that between 15% and 20% of children under five are malnourished in Malaysia. The problem is prevalent in cities where the cost of living is higher, causing families to suffer bigger financial strain.

“We would think that in our country, the percentage is going down. But in the past five years, the trend has actually been going up,” he said.

According to the United Nations, even before the Covid-19 pandemic, there were an estimated 47 million children under five “moderately or severely wasted”, with most of them living in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia.

Now, with lockdowns and disruptions to the food supply chain, the UN has warned that the Covid-19 pandemic could see nearly seven million more children experience stunting as a result of malnutrition.

Hazreen said the problem in Malaysia can be traced back to the urban lifestyle, lack of awareness among parents and financial stress.

“There are various factors behind food security problems in urban populations, mainly household income and accessibility to high-quality food.

“Sometimes for the working parent, as long as you put food on the table, regardless of nutrition, it will do.

“Other times, when parents are stressed, they may also divert income to some other things, such as smoking, so less money gets spent on quality food.”

He said there were also cases where older children or elderly parents get priority over more nutritious food.

“Financially, oftentimes, nutritious food will become the last thing they think about. It’s also the lifestyle of people in the cities. When everything is so expensive, and you have to work extra hours, as long as you get the food, it doesn’t really matter.”

He also said some children in need of food basket assistance would get overlooked if they did not go for health check-ups in public clinics.

The Rehabilitation Programme for Malnourished Children, also known as the Food Basket Programme, has been a health ministry initiative since 1989.

Children who fulfil certain criteria, such as being underweight, are given a food basket consisting of items such as rice, wheat flour, anchovies, cooking oil, dry green bean, biscuits and full cream milk, and also multivitamin supplements every month until they recover for a maximum period of six months.

Hazreen said the programme is to ensure growth and proper development among lower-income children found to be underweight, adding that this was important for young children to ensure proper development of the brains and bones.

However, he said, it is also common for people who get the food baskets to sell them for money because of poverty.

He attributed this to the lack of awareness among the B40. “The parents themselves are not practising healthy eating habits.”

In a study he conducted in 2018, Hazreen found that many residents living in PPR flats tended to practise unhealthy eating habits, and would consume fast-food at least once a week.

He also found that 86.7% of the respondents in the low-income community consumed fruit and vegetables less than five times a day, and 11.7% consumed carbonated and sweetened drinks more than twice daily.

“If the parents themselves are not consuming nutritious food, what more their children?” he said.

He recommended that the government work with dieticians and NGOs to come up with an action plan to redistribute fresh uneaten food produce from restaurants, factories and high-end grocery stores to lower-income households.

“Say, for example, fresh produce like vegetables do not fit with criteria for them to be sold at higher-end supermarkets, we can repackage and provide them to the PPR flats.

“If you delegate these things properly, then we can decrease food wastage and, at the same time, improve malnutrition among children in the B40.”