ABSTRACT
Life cannot exist without continuous supplies in adequate amounts of all essential nutrients. If even one nutrient is limiting or missing from the nutrient medium or diet of an organism, the organism will suffer and ultimately die. The magnitude of the effects of malnutrition is increasingly being recognized. Estimates suggest that nutrition-related factors are responsible for about 35 per cent of child deaths and 11 per cent of the total global disease burden (Black et al. 2008). Almost 870 million people are currently under-nourished (FAO 2011a), over two billion people are afflicted by a deficiency in one or more micro-nutrients (WHO 2011) and over one billion are over-weight (WHO 2011).
