50¢ a Day Sustains a Life.
Plumpy’nut is a remarkably simple and effective concoction. Hailed by experts as a “revolution in nutritional affairs,” it is made primarily of peanut butter, powdered milk, sugar, and enriched with vitamins and minerals. Plumpy’nut is unique in that it does not require refrigeration, water or cooking. Mothers simply feed their children the paste. Many children can even feed themselves. Even more remarkably, each daily serving of Plumpy’nut costs only 50 cents — about $15 per month per child. Easy to produce, distribute and consume, it’s no wonder CNN’s Anderson Cooper deemed Plumpy’nut “the most important advance ever for the cure and prevention of malnutrition”.
Praised by the Experts.
The New York Times:
What is Plumpy’nut? Sound it out, and you get the idea: it’s an edible paste made of peanuts, packed with calories and vitamins, that is specially formulated to renourish starving children. Since its widespread introduction five years ago, it has been credited with significantly lowering mortality rates during famines in Africa. Children on a Plumpy’nut regimen add pounds rapidly, often going from a near-death state to relative health in a month. In the world of humanitarian aid, where progress is usually measured in subtle increments of misery, the new product offers a rare satisfaction: swift, visible, fantastic efficacy.
Newsweek:
Since Nutriset created Plumpy’nut a decade ago, aid groups have hailed the Plumpy products as revolutionary and carted the packets around the world in droves—with good reason: the paste can bring an emaciated child on the brink of starvation back to life in just four to six weeks, eliminating or reducing the need for a costly stay at an emergency feeding center.
Plumpy’nut doesn’t require cooking, nor does it spoil if left for several months in tropical conditions. And unlike fortified-milk powders, Plumpy products don’t need to be mixed with water, which is often unavailable or contaminated in famine situations. The results have been remarkable: in one trial distribution in Niger five years ago, the mortality rate among severely malnourished children plummeted from between 30 and 35 percent down to just 5 percent.
