Nutrition: Foundations for Life

Failure to thrive” has traditionally been divided into two broad categories: organic and non-organic.

Organic failure to thrive can be further subdivided:

§         inadequate caloric intake

§         malabsorption

§         increased caloric requirement.

§         Metabolic disease which interferes with proper utilization or storage of nutrients

Non-organic failure to thrive is the failure of a child under age 5 years to gain weight even in the presence of adequate calories.  The term is reserved for cases for which an organic cause cannot be identified and implies that there are psychological or environmental etiologic factors present.

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