The ‘miracle’ food Adam Liaw and WHO says is the difference between life and death
How do you save millions of children from malnutrition in areas where food is scarce and there are no refrigerators and hospitals?
The answer is a kind of “miracle” peanut butter inspired by Nutella, enriched with skim milk powder, vegetable oil, sugar, and a vitamin and mineral elixir that can restore life and color to children on the brink of death.
Plumpy’Nut peanut butter was invented 30 years ago by a French pediatrician who saw children dying in Africa’s arid Sahel strip; This was because the therapeutic milk usually used in hospitals spoiled easily.
Almost 9 million children a year are now treated for severe malnutrition with Plumpy’Nut, the world’s first Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) that can be absorbed directly from the package like cookie dough.
According to UNICEF, nine out of 10 children suffering from severe malnutrition are cured thanks to the paste; However, key donor countries, such as intermittent aid from the United States, have dealt a major blow to production.
Nutritionist Alison Fleet, from Sydney’s northern beaches, has led the technical side of UNICEF’s efforts to increase production to one billion packs a year. It helped expand from a single French supplier to more than 20 in countries where the paste is needed most, from Madagascar to Afghanistan.
Approved by the World Health Organization in 2007, RUTFs are so nutritionally powerful that some consider them more medicine than food.
“This is a pivotal moment in the treatment of severe acute malnutrition worldwide, as previously children and their families had to travel miles to a large hospital to receive treatment, and many died,” Fleet said.
But Plumpy’Nut packages, sealed and dehydrated to prevent bacteria from growing, can be delivered directly to poverty-stricken communities and have a two-year shelf life.
Every part of each 92-gram, 500-calorie package is optimized: 30.3 grams of fat from peanuts and oil, 12.8 grams of protein from hazelnuts and amino acid-rich powdered milk, and 25 percent sugar to provide a quick energy boost and mask iron, zinc, potassium, folate and B vitamins with sweetness.
Each package according to NPR analysisIt provides the calories of two McDonald’s hamburger patties, the protein of half a chicken breast, the calcium of three glasses of milk, the vitamin C of one orange, the iron of a bunch of spinach, and the folic acid of nine asparagus spears. Children eat about two takeaways a day.
The product’s inventor, child nutritionist Andre Briel, had tried making therapeutic treats from bars, biscuits, pancakes and donuts, but they were all too brittle or destroyed critical vitamins when cooked.
He eventually landed on Nutella-inspired peanut butter with a buttery hazelnut-chocolate spread as a vehicle that could quickly provide the countless building blocks needed to ensure the healthy growth of bones, muscles, and brains.
Chef and food writer Adam Liaw has seen the paste in action in Burundi, a mountainous, landlocked African country where every scrap of dirt is used to scoop food from the ground, but it’s still not enough.
Most children grow up stunted due to malnutrition. Liaw met a woman who was distressed because her husband was no longer around and she had six children to feed. Kids were eating Plumpy’Nut straight from the package.
“It was clear to me that this little package was literally the difference between life and death,” said Liaw, the UNICEF ambassador.
For other kids, it’s the difference between being too weak to stand up and having the energy to chase a football.
“When you actually see this in action, it becomes more of an emotional thing than a scientific thing,” Liaw said.
Plumpy’Nut’s invention was controversial at first. Mark Manary, one of the first researchers to try the paste in Malawi. Accused of ‘killing children’ by a colleague who thought the intervention was too simple to work.
But one 2004 article The study conducted by Manary showed that 95 percent of children improved with the paste.
“It hasn’t been scaled in a long time,” Fleet said. “That’s what happens in public health because governments are so conservative. You have to produce a lot of clinical evidence.”
Alternative RUTFs to suit local tastes, including chickpea and mung bean pastes for use in Asia, are now in the works, Fleet said. However, there was a decline in funding for the program.
“We had a lot of major donors reducing their support for these programs because of the Ukraine war and instability, so they put money into defense instead of humanitarian programs,” Fleet said.
Approximately 120,000 bags of paste were sold last year left to gather dust It is in a warehouse in Rhode Island after its shipment to Sudan was canceled following the Trump administration’s evacuation of USAID.
Suppliers have the capacity to produce 290,000 tonnes of paste, but only a third of this amount has been delivered in 2025.
UNICEF aims to provide long-term, secure financing to the program so that the product can reach 12.2 million children experiencing severe wasting.
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Angus Dalton is science correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect with: X or email.
