malnutrition

Malnutrition is illness and weakness from not getting the right food. Not simply hunger — the wrong nutrients, or too few.

It covers both undernutrition and, less obviously, diets that provide enough calories and not enough of anything else, which is why malnutrition exists in wealthy countries as well as in famines. Children are affected most severely, since the damage to growth can be permanent. The word is clinical and neutral. The adjective is malnourished and it describes the person rather than the condition.