MALAYSIA has succeeded in reducing its incidence of poverty from 5.5% in 2000 to 0.4 % in 2018 (Department of Statistics Malaysia 2018). While it has done remarkably well in reducing poverty, narrowing inequality and uplifting the standard of living of its citizens, there are emerging areas of concern that require urgent attention. One of these is the nutritional status of Malaysians.

The Global Nutrition Report 2018 provided by the Independent Expert Group (IEG), which represents wide-ranging expertise from across the global nutrition community, reported that Malaysia was among 41 countries of the 141 reported which had three burdens of malnutrition – obesity, stunting and anaemia. In fact, Malaysia is the only member of Asean with all three of these burdens.