Let's talk about peanut butter, malnutrition and 'Plumpynut'

On the plane on the way to Honduras, I saw a 60 Minutes newsclip about Plumpynut -- a peanut butter, powdered milk, oil, confectioners sugar and vitamin/mineral mixture which is saving the lives of starving children in (mostly African) third world countries.

All those years when I was giving my children peanut butter and powdered milk balls I thought they were just eating a tasty treat, not a nutritional supplement! I began to wonder if perhaps we could mix up something similar to use with the nutrition hospital patients. When we got there, I did some online research to learn more about Plumpynut and set to work devising a recipe that could be duplicated after we were gone.

The children loved the stuff--even little Maria Suyapa (at least after the first few days when it was a struggle to get her starved little body to accept any formula that wasn't very diluted). The children are each given a small ball of it twice a day for a supplemental snack. They call it nutra maní which basically means "nourishing peanut".

Notice how much better Maria Suyapa looked already after a week or 10 days of formula supplemented with ever-larger tastes of nutra maní. (The baby on the right is 18 months old and was a new admission to the nutrition hospital.)