This paper looks at why nutrition is integral to economic growth. It includes a short discussionof how malnutrition acts as a brake on economic development, and posits that any government pursuing an efficient development strategy should include nutrition policy as an input that along with sound fiscal, foreign investment, exchange rate, and sector specific policies is requisite to sustainable growth and poverty reduction. The first section of the paper discusses specific barriers to raising nutrition’s profile on national policy agendas. In addition to a limited understanding among policymakers of the economic costs of malnutrition, these barriers include conflation of food securitywith nutrition security. That is, the assumption that once food security is achieved,positive nutrition outcomes will follow automatically. The first section of the paper also examines how countries that do recognize the importance of nutrition policy are hamstrung in terms of implementation. The challenges of cross sectoral collaboration are discussed in detail. The second section of the paper uses Malawi as a case study to illustrate the theoretical points put forth in the first section. Malawi is one of the poorest counties in the world and has some of the highest rates of undernutrition in sub Saharan Africa. However, it is also home to an unusually proactive National Nutrition Department. This agency, housed directly under the Office of the President and Cabinet (as opposed to the Ministry of Health, where nutrition departments are typically located) has made incorporating nutrition objectives into Malawi’s mainstream development agenda a central goal. The case study looks at where the Department has succeeded and where challenges remain. The paper concludes with a series of recommendations tailored to the Malawi context, but hopefully instructive for other countries and development partners as well.