Etiological determinants of protein calorie undernutrition in a rural child community.

Two groups of randomly selected underweight and well-nourished preschool children residing in study villages of Punjab, Ludhiana district were examined with respect to their socioeconomic background, birth weights, dietary intakes, quality of received mother care, blood biochemistry, parasite load, psychomotor development and past illness prevalence. It was found that underweight children showed significantly less favourable indices in all of the above categories except stool parasitology suggesting an extremely intricate and complex interaction of a host of ecological variables in the causation of undernutrition. Using the discriminate analysis on readily available social variables, it was found that caste affiliation and, less so parental income were the two most significant variables distinguishing between the two groups. A model for the interaction patterns of ecological variables in their effect of protein calorie malnutrition for the given area is suggested.