Plumpy'nut

Hunger fades with Plumpy'nut
(Photo: WorldChanging)

(Reuters) It’s safe. It’s nutritious. And it’s tasty. It’s the best thing to have happened to tens of thousands of hungry African children.

Michel Lescanne lifts the lid of a giant mixer that stirs peanut paste, sugar and a special vitamin mix into a sticky cream at his small village factory in Malaunay, northern France.

The brown paste, known as Plumpy’nut, has become an elixir of life for tens of thousands of African children.

Aid agencies say it is a huge leap in the fight against hunger, because infants can eat the sweet-smelling paste — with all the nutritional value of traditional milk formula — at home, rather than in hospital.

“We wanted a product that doesn’t need to be mixed with water and fulfils all nutritional needs,” Lescanne said at the factory in a picturesque village as workers filled Plumpy’nut paste into cereal bar-sized packages.

“We also believe food should taste good. Maybe that’s a French thing.”

After making milk formulas and other food products for use in humanitarian crises, he hit on the idea for the paste after a colleague had Nutella chocolate hazelnut spread for breakfast.

Plumpy’nut came out some seven years ago but production has risen sharply in recent months after food crises in Sudan’s Darfur region, and now in Niger, put it in the spotlight.

Lescanne said about 250,000 children will be fed this year with Plumpy’nut — a name combining plump and peanut — compared with 100,000 in 2004.

Full story at GulfNews

Read more about Plumpy'nut at WorldChanging