In the UK, malnutrition was calculated to cost over £13 billion in 2007, representing over 10% of total health and social care expenditure in that year, and almost twice as much as that spent on obesity and its co morbidities (Fig 3). In Ireland, even after adjusting for its younger population relative to the UK, the cost of malnutrition is calculated to have exceeded E1.5 billion, again over 10% of the E13.8 billion health budget that year.