Malnutrition is one of the most important factors of prevalence of diseases and mortality in children. On the other hand , identification of causative agents of malnutrition and prevention and control of disease is very crucial . This study was done for evaluation of risk factors in  malnourished children under 5 years old in Zahedan.

          For this purpose , 1050 children attending to health centers of Zahedan who had malnutrition selected randomly in a descriptive cross sectional study and a questionnaire with demographic characteristics of mothers and children completed by interviewing. Then , collected data was analyzed by SPSS software and   descriptive statistics.

          Results of the study showed that malnutrition in girls was more prevalent than boys (60.1% and 39.9% respectively). Also it was cleared that malnutrition in 6–24 months children was more prevalent than other age groups. In majority of cases interval of consecutive pregnancies was less than 24 month(35.2%) and number of family members was more than 5 persons (47%). In 54.3% of children the age of beginning food supplement was after 6 month. Most of the parents were uneducated (38.5% fathers and 52.0% mothers). Although 97.1% of mothers were house-wives but 51.9% of them were house-wives and uneducated . In 69% , weight 
   gain of mothers during pregnancy was less than 7 Kg total studied cases 58.4% of mothers had attended to health centers during pregnancy but in 65.9% , the number of attending during this period was less than 4 times.

         From above results it was concluded that malnutrition in children is more due to  defect in preparation procedure and using food supplement and the time of beginning food supplement , illiteracy and low education of mother and lack of family planning. So, training mothers for increasing their knowledge making more 
   efforts for changing culture view point of people for family planning , keeping enough proper interval in pregnancies , equal oportunity for boys and girls helping to increase education levels of girls are among the most important factors for prevention the occurrence of malnutrition and increasing nutritional situation of 
   the community.