Plumpy Nut. Say it a few times with me … Plumpy Nut. What a fun name for something that is going to change the world.
Every year, millions of children die from malnutrition. Most are under the age of 2. Plumpy Nut is a remarkable product - basically, peanut butter with powdered milk and vitamins. While it obviously doesn’t fill every nutrient needed by developing children, it fills a bunch. It’s rich in protein, fat, calcium and vitamins. It’s ready-to-eat - it doesn’t need water and the ingredients are locally available. (All of the things I preached about before, during and after living in Morocco. Local solutions to local problems.) Best of all, kids love it. Kids whose undernourishment has gone far enough that they now suffer from anorexia on top of undernourishment. (Heck, it sounds good even to me - for some reason I keep thinking of the peanut butter inside a Reece’s.)
My husband and I watched a special on it on 60-Minutes. It’s hard to describe how I felt watching it. For me, it brings up a lot of feelings and memories from Morocco. I don’t mean ever to imply that the children in Morocco are anything like the children seen in this video. There are few areas in this world where poverty is so … heart wrenchingly open. But there are many places where the malnutrition is less obvious but just as oppressive. Places where the death of an infant is seen as a fact of life, heart wrenching as it is.
That statement alone breaks my heart - that there are still places in our world where the death of a child is a fact of life.
Plumpy Nut isn’t going to solve the world’s problems - or to stop the death of children in developing countries - but it will make a huge difference.
Do yourself a favor and spend a few minutes watching the video. I promise you that while it’s incredibly sad, it also brings hope. And what a better way to start the holiday season than with hope?
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