| American Peanut Council launches 'Peanut Butter for the Hungry' |
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Big Canoe Resident travels the globe
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| Plumpy'nut, a peanut-based therapeutic food, is provided to infants in Niger to prevent malnutrition. (Photo courtesy of CBS 60 Minutes) |
By Barbara Schneider
bschneider@bigcanoenews.com
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| Plumpy'nut's sweet, easy-to-eat paste quickly provides needed nutrients. (Photo courtesy of CBS 60 Minutes) |
This peanut-based therapeutic food—a blend of powdered milk, ground peanuts, oil, powdered sugar, vitamins, and minerals—is saving the lives of children who likely would have died from severe acute malnutrition.
A sweet, easy-to-eat paste with the consistency of mashed potatoes, Plumpy'nut works quickly to provide starving bodies with needed nutrients . . . and kids love it!
World Health Organization statistics show severe acute malnutrition kills five million children a year—one child every six seconds. Children aged six months to two years are in greatest jeopardy.
With Plumpy’nut, Doctors Without Borders now believe there is a way to save millions of children. “Time after time, kids on the brink of death are brought back,” says Dr. Milton Tectonidis, the chief nutritionist for Doctors Without Borders in a CBS’ 60 Minutes segment, “A Lifesaver Called
Plumpy’nut” (June 2008).
According to United Nations reports, childhood malnutrition is so severe in the African country of Niger that 25 percent of children die before their fifth birthday and 800,000 children suffer from severe or moderate malnutrition annually.
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More about Plumpy’nut...
The French Company Nutriset produces the product for UNICEF and there are several other Plumpy’nut factories now in Africa. The first US-based production site was recently approved for New Jersey. Plumpy’nut—first used in 1999 during the crisis in Darfur in western Sudan—is well suited for the harsh conditions found in many Third World countries; it doesn’t require refrigeration, water—both often in short supply—or cooking. Packaged in easy to transport two-inch foil packets, mothers can easily squeeze Plumpy’nut into an infant’s mouth and toddlers can feed themselves. Asked about peanut allergies, Dr. Susan Shepherd, a pediatrician working with Doctors Without Borders in Niger, doesn’t see it. Food allergies, she said, are rare in non-industrialized nations. The peanut-based therapeutic food in paste form has a two-year shelf life and costs about $20 for a one-month supply. |
The American Peanut Council (APC) plays a significant role in the fight against malnutrition in Third World Countries.
Just ask Big Canoe resident Howard Valentine who travels the globe on behalf of this national trade association. Although marketing and education are a large part of his job, he brings a decided humanitarian focus to his position as executive director of the Peanut Foundation, the trade association’s research arm.
Networking with key contacts throughout the peanut industry, Valentine has seen first hand how peanut industry volunteers and expertise can bring hope to seemingly hopeless situations.
Seated in his home office overlooking Lake Petit, Valentine – with his peanut industry colleagues just a click or call away—makes things happen for those in need. When earthquakes struck Haiti in January 2010, he recalls, a container ship loaded with peanuts was anchored in a harbor near the epicenter.
“With food scarce after the devastating quakes and transportation at a stand still, we found out the container was lost. We called peanut growers and processors around the country—companies like Lance and Smuckers—everyone understood the need. In remarkable time, the peanut industry replaced the lost cargo, sending 10 containers carrying 40,000 pounds each of peanuts to Haiti.”
That’s the kind of networking that makes a difference.
“Peanut Butter for the Hungry,” APC’s humanitarian initiative helps ensure a steady supply of peanut butter-based therapeutic food supplements for malnourished children. APC and the peanut industry provides volunteers to help improve peanut farming and production methods in Africa and Caribbean countries and the organization raises funds for charitable programs.
APC encourages the development of local production in Africa and Haiti to provide local jobs as well as to bring the food supplement source closer to children in need. To help these local factories succeed, Valentine and his colleagues recruit food safety and sanitation experts to work with growers and processors to improve quality and increase production levels. And APC provides manufacturing experts who help adapt American peanut production techniques to the resources and needs of Third World countries. Often, they help design and build factories to produce the food supplement.
“There’s a technology team with academic volunteers from Texas A&M University, University of Georgia and North Carolina State who are experts in the science of peanut farming,” says Valentine. “They were sent by the industry to work with Africa and Haitian farmers to show them how to improve crops.
“This is especially important because peanut quality can vary by region and country. While Africa is one of the largest growers of peanuts, crops there are often affected by aflatoxin, a fungus that can cause health issues when ingested in high amounts ,” he says.
The Peanut Foundation is funding a project to map the peanut genome and develop a peanut plant with genes resistant to the fungus. “By identifying the genetic markers we can create a resistant peanut,” he says, “an effort that might have taken 15 years in the past can now be accomplished in two years once the genes are identified and marked.”
Peanut Butter for the Hungry
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| The U.S. research delegation and a researcher from Brazil in Bamako, Mali, for a conference to help African farmers make changes in their agricultural preactices so peanuts can be used in Plumpy'Nut. Currently their production is too high in aflatoxin. Pictured (l. to r.) Dr. Tom Stalker (NCSU), Dr. Victor Nwosu (M & M Mars), Dr. Richard Wilson (retired National Program Leader, USDA), Howard Valentine, Dr. David Bertioli (Catholic University-Brasilia) |
A program similar to Plumpy’nut called “Meds & Food for Kids” (MFK) is leading the charge to cure child malnutrition in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. MFK combats childhood malnutrition using a product called Medika Mamba—“peanut butter medicine” in Haitian Creole—an energy dense peanut butter fortified with protein and nutritional supplements.
Medika Mamba is produced in Haiti, aiding the Haitian economy by employing workers, purchasing peanuts locally where possible and helping farmers to improve their agricultural practices.
What does the American Peanut industry get out of all these charitable activities? “Absolutely nothing,” says Valentine with a grin, “except for the knowledge we are helping people in need.”
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