Plumpy'Nut
WHAT IS PLUMPY'NUT?
Plumpy'Nut is a peanut-based paste in a plastic wrapper for treatment of severe acute malnutrition manufactured by a French company, Nutriset. Removing the need for hospitalization, the 92 gram packets of this paste can be administered at home and allow larger numbers to be treated. Plumpy'Nut may be referred to in scientific literature as a Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF).
TASTE
The ingredients in Plumpy'Nut include peanut-based paste, with sugar, vegetable fat and skimmed milk powder, enriched with vitamins and minerals. Plumpy'Nut is said to be surprisingly tasty.
USAGE
Plumpy'Nut has a two-year shelf-life and requires no water, preparation, or refrigeration. Its ease of use has made mass treatment of malnutrition in famine situations more efficient than in the past. Severe acute malnutrition has traditionally been treated with therapeutic milk and required hospitalization. Unlike milk, Plumpy'Nut can be administered at home and without medical supervision, providing comprehensive content of calories and essential nutrients that restore and maintain body weight and health in severely malnourished children.
The United Nations has recognized this utility, stating in 2007 that "new evidence suggests... that large numbers of children with severe acute malnutrition can be treated in their communities without being admitted to a health facility or a therapeutic feeding centre."
HOW IT WORKS
Plumpy’Nut is used as a treatment for emergency malnutrition cases. It results in rapid weight gain derived from broad nutrient intake, which can alleviate a starving child from impending illness or death.
The product is easy for children to eat because it dispenses readily from a durable, tear-open package.
HISTORY
The development of Plumpy’Nut was Inspired by the popular Nutella spread. Plumpy'Nut was formulated in 1996 by André Briend, a French pediatric nutritionist, andMichel Lescanne, a food-processing engineer.
Nutella is a hazelnut-based chocolate spread, composed from sugar, modified palm oil, hazelnuts, cocoa, skimmed milk powder, whey powder, lecithin, and vanillin. In contrast, Plumpy'Nut is peanut-based without including chocolate, while containing vitamins and other dietary minerals, in keeping with its mission as a therapeutic food.
The first small trials of Plumpy’Nut took place in Chad in 1997 and in Southern Sudan in 1998. A larger trial was conducted in Ethiopia in 2000. During the Niger food crisis of 2005, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) treated over 60,000 children with Plumpy’Nut, with a recovery rate of more than 90%, demonstrating to other NGOs its effectiveness on a large scale. Soon after, Nutriset scaled up its production and began to license its technology to factories in developing countries, such as in Niger and Ethiopia.
References:
The United Kingdom Plumpy'Nut Challenge is now closed. But you can read more stories like Ekure's at Merlin's Plumpy'Nut Challenge.
It is important to understand that there are many types of hunger and malnutrition (poor nutrition) around the world. Plumpy'Nut
is not a miracle cure for global hunger or for global malnutrition. Plumpy'Nut addresses only one kind of hunger -- acute episodes of extreme food deprivation or illness, the kind mainly
associated with famines and conflicts. Plumpy'Nut is not designed for the other major kind of hunger, notably chronic hunger due to long-term poor diets. Nor is it designed to fight long-term
malnutrition that is due to various kinds of chronic micronutrient deficiencies, such as iron, zinc and vitamin-A deficiencies.
