Experts have stated time and again that lack of knowledge on food values causes childhood malnutrition. The unwelcome phenomenon of extraordinary economic growth with massive malnutrition in Bangladesh is a matter of serious concern. Malnutrition in children and adolescents, and even adults particularly women, is a major concern for Bangladesh. Despite progress, levels of malnutrition in Bangladesh are amongst the highest in the world, and this is a major cause of death and disease in children and women. In addition to causing individual tragedies like maternal and child mortality, malnutrition exacts heavy costs from the health care system through excess morbidity, increased premature delivery, and elevated risks of heart disease and diabetes. The economic consequences of Bangladesh’s malnutrition problem are profound, resulting in lost productivity and reduced intellectual and learning capacity.

There has not been much research as to how agriculture and agricultural food systems, policies and strategies can be better designed to reduce malnutrition. The idea was that an increase in food supply would itself foster nutritional advancement. This over-simplistic belief has expectedly not yielded positive results. It is clear from different types of data that diets have diversified very little over a period of rapid productivity growth in the main food staple.

Awareness about health and nutrition is unfortunately rather poor in Bangladesh. Just for example Sixty million people of Bangladesh do not take in enough iodine, resulting in several physio-psychological complexities, including poor intelligence. A major challenge in Bangladesh is to understand the constraints to dietary diversification, and policy options for accelerating diversification. Examples of potential policy levers include a reorientation of Bangladesh's agricultural research and development towards more micronutrient rich crops and livestock products, an increased focus on diversifying production via agricultural extension programmes, behavioral change and communication interventions to nudge parents into healthier feeding practices, nutrition-sensitive social safety nets to improve the purchasing power of the poorest households (perhaps conditional upon participation in nutritional programmes), and interventions to alleviate the many marketing bottlenecks that inhibit both domestic production and domestic and international trade of perishable nutrient-rich foods in particular (e.g. lack of cold storage, inadequate infrastructure, regulatory burdens to trade)

Bangladesh must ensure participation of the people of all strata in the health sector as the government could not alone achieve universal health coverage.