Project Peanut Butter: A Miracle Food for Malnourished Children

 
Chiponde is a nutritional supplement that helps malnourished children recover their health. Each packet contains 500 calories; the USDA estimates young children need between 1,000 to 2,000 calories per day while older children and adolescents need between 1,400 to 3,200 calories per day. (Photo by Racine Tucker-Hamilton)

Peanut butter is comfort food for many American children and has been known to provide fairy princesses the right amount of sustenance to decorate a castle, and tiny knights enough energy to slay imaginary dragons.  But one would be hard-pressed to say that peanut butter has actually saved an American child’s life.

That's why it's fascinating to learn that in many African countries and the developing world, a peanut butter-based product is saving the lives of severely malnourished children. While in Africa last month, I had the opportunity to visit “Project Peanut Butter,” a Blantyre, Malawi factory where it is produced. The brand name is Plumpy’Nut but Project Peanut Butter’s version is called Chiponde.

The small, unassuming package of Chiponde is about the size of a three-by-five index card and weighs a meager three ounces, but packs a whopping 500 calories. The ready-to-use therapeutic food product is made from peanut butter, sugar, oil, milk powder and is chock-full of micronutrients.  I had an opportunity to taste it and I see why kids gobble it up.  It reminded me of the filling inside of a peanut butter cookie.  While taste may be important to the children who use it, accessibility, effectiveness, and cost are why it’s being touted by scientists and food policy experts as the newest weapon in the fight against childhood hunger.

Children who are suffering from acute malnutrition eat Chiponde for several weeks. Because of its convenience, mothers are able to treat their children at home instead of at a medical facility.  This is important because Project Peanut Butter officials say the home treatment option carries a 95 percent recovery rate, compared with just 40 percent for children who are treated in hospitals or clinics.

Project Peanut Butter helps  support Blantyre by purchasing its main ingredients from local farmers and hiring employees from the community. The factory opened in 2004, and with a small amount of U.S. government funding for machinery, they have steadily increased production each year. The company employs nearly two dozen workers and recently expanded its outreach beyond its borders.  Last summer Project Peanut Butter sent 4,000 boxes of Chiponde to the Horn of Africa to assist famine victims. The request was for 7,000 boxes, but the company was unable to fulfill the order due to Malawi’s pending "hunger season," – the season when the old crop is gone and the new crop isn’t ready for harvest – and the hospitals and clinics will begin admitting severely malnourished children.

 
The Project Peanut Butter factory in Blantayre, Malawi, produces Chiponde with financial assistance from USAID. Most malnourished kids will eat the nutritional supplement for six weeks.

 
Chiponde is used to treat malnourished children so that they can grow up to be healthy, like these kids posing with Bread for the World's Racine Tucker-Hamilton in the Jombo village in southern Malawi.

Racine Tucker-Hamilton is media relations manager at Bread for the World.