What is Undernourishment?

A vivid reality of the concentration camps, prisoners were given only minimal food that was especially insufficient for the painstaking labor they were forced to perform. Daily allowances of food consisted of 10 ? ounces of bread and 1 ? pints of thin soup, although often the prisoners received even less. Given the undernourishment, the prisoners watch themselves and each other disintegrate into emaciated beings that resembled little more than a collection of skeletal bones, often leading to death. This created a primitive desire for food of which mental life centered.