Wednesday, November 07, 2007
Plumpynut
By Tim Henry
A week ago, my editor pitched a Blog to me about a breakthrough in a food-supplement for famine-ravaged countries, with the unlikely name of “Plumpynut.” I watched a 60 Minutes segment with the white-haired Anderson Cooper roaming through Niger, showing kids squeezing packets of a peanut-butter paste in their mouths.
In an age when American’s are dosing themselves all manner of drugs for increasingly obscure symptoms, when pills can give men extremely accurate and responsive erections, and when five year olds are hopped up on Ritalin and Adderall, what a sad statement of humanities priorities it is that simple, life saving and sustaining sustenance has only recently been created and distributed.
And a few days after I discovered Plumpynut, it was Halloween.
The United States and Africa have long been represented the extremes of human conditions. Abundance versus scarcity, prosperity versus suffering. For the first time in my life, I bought candy and handed it out to lines of children dressed as all manner of super-hero’s and monsters. My roommates and I spent around thirty dollars for Pumpkins and candy.
“A daily dose of Plumpynut costs about a dollar,” said Anderson Cooper in his 60 Minutes cameo. So we had essentially bought the equivalent of 30 days of food for one African child – and for what? Halloween is the first in the American holiday season of abundance (followed, of course, by another type of feast, and then a feast of materialism and consumerism).
My dogs started eating the pumpkins, and we realized that pumpkins are more than just ornamental squash . . . they are in fact a vegetable. They are food that we cut designs into, while Africans are trying not to starve.
Plumpynut is a peanut butter flavored vitamin paste that can bring terribly emaciated children back from the brink of death. “Plumpynut” was created by the French company Nutriset, and has been put into widespread use in developing nations by Doctors Without Borders. It is a blend of peanut butter, powdered milk, powdered sugar, and vitamins.
Powdered milk and other basic food substitutes require preparation, available clean water, and refrigeration, all basic elements that we take for granted in developed countries. Part of Plumpynut’s effectiveness is that it does not need to be prepared, refrigerated, or distributed by professionals.
Nutriset calls Plumpynut a Ready to Use Therapeutic food or RUTF, and can be eaten directly from it’s packet.
A week ago, my editor pitched a Blog to me about a breakthrough in a food-supplement for famine-ravaged countries, with the unlikely name of “Plumpynut.” I watched a 60 Minutes segment with the white-haired Anderson Cooper roaming through Niger, showing kids squeezing packets of a peanut-butter paste in their mouths.
In an age when American’s are dosing themselves all manner of drugs for increasingly obscure symptoms, when pills can give men extremely accurate and responsive erections, and when five year olds are hopped up on Ritalin and Adderall, what a sad statement of humanities priorities it is that simple, life saving and sustaining sustenance has only recently been created and distributed.
And a few days after I discovered Plumpynut, it was Halloween.
The United States and Africa have long been represented the extremes of human conditions. Abundance versus scarcity, prosperity versus suffering. For the first time in my life, I bought candy and handed it out to lines of children dressed as all manner of super-hero’s and monsters. My roommates and I spent around thirty dollars for Pumpkins and candy.
“A daily dose of Plumpynut costs about a dollar,” said Anderson Cooper in his 60 Minutes cameo. So we had essentially bought the equivalent of 30 days of food for one African child – and for what? Halloween is the first in the American holiday season of abundance (followed, of course, by another type of feast, and then a feast of materialism and consumerism).
My dogs started eating the pumpkins, and we realized that pumpkins are more than just ornamental squash . . . they are in fact a vegetable. They are food that we cut designs into, while Africans are trying not to starve.
Plumpynut is a peanut butter flavored vitamin paste that can bring terribly emaciated children back from the brink of death. “Plumpynut” was created by the French company Nutriset, and has been put into widespread use in developing nations by Doctors Without Borders. It is a blend of peanut butter, powdered milk, powdered sugar, and vitamins.
Powdered milk and other basic food substitutes require preparation, available clean water, and refrigeration, all basic elements that we take for granted in developed countries. Part of Plumpynut’s effectiveness is that it does not need to be prepared, refrigerated, or distributed by professionals.
Nutriset calls Plumpynut a Ready to Use Therapeutic food or RUTF, and can be eaten directly from it’s packet.
# posted by [X]press Staff @ 6:34 AM 