In medicine, wasting refers to the process by which a debilitating disease causes muscle and fat tissue to "waste" away. Wasting is sometimes referred to as "acute malnutrition" because it is believed that episodes of wasting have a short duration, in contrast to stunting, which is regarded as chronic malnutrition. According to the latest UN estimates, an estimated 52 million children under 5 years of age, or 8%, were wasted in 2011. The vast majority, about 70%, of the world's wasted children live in Asia, most in South-Central Asia.
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Famous quotes containing the word wasting:
“So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.”
—Bible: New Testament, 2 Corinthians 4:16.
“Dead power is everywhere among us—in the forest, chopping down the songs; at night in the industrial landscape, wasting and stiffening the new life; in the streets of the city, throwing away the day. We wanted something different for our people: not to find ourselves an old, reactionary republic, full of ghost-fears, the fears of death and the fears of birth. We want something else.”
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)
“The thing that made me more and more afraid
Was that we’d ground it sharp and hadn’t known,
And now were only wasting precious blade.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)