Considering the complexness of the factors involved in the genesis of malnutrition, several patterns are set forth in this assay that stress the sequence with which biosociocultural variables participate in it. The evolution the causality concepts have had, allow the interpretation of the initial interest to explain the origin of disease with the purpose of offering a treatment in a scientific basis. Once the relation between malnutrition and the energetic and protein deficiencies have been recognized, another phase of knowledge was initiated having primarily a preventive goal; under this new guidance, the attention of research workers was directed to the identification of the disease as a manifestation of the inadequate social integration of man in the economical, political and cultural aspects, as in the psychosocial.