Are you malnourished? Quite possibly

The word "malnutrition" tends to invoke images of starving children in refugee camps, fleeing conflict or drought in lands far-away. While that image does reflect a reality of hunger, it does not solely define malnutrition nor those who suffer from it.

Certainly with more than 820 million hungry people in the world, most of them living in the Asia-Pacific region, undernourishment is definitely a huge problem and one that has stubbornly vexed attempts to crack it.

But there are other malnutrition phantoms in our midst and these are probably lurking closer to your own home than you might realize. Waistlines of men and women have been expanding in recent decades and there are now more than 2 billion overweight adults in the world - 670 million of them are obese. More than 120 million children and teens are also defined as obese.