Peanut butter project helps starving children

Researchers may have a simple answer to help feed thousands of starving children in Africa: peanut butter.

Dr. Mark Manary, a pediatrics professor at Washington University in St. Louis, has spent years providing an enriched peanut butter mixture to malnourished children in the sub-Saharan country of Malawi.

The mixture made of peanuts, powdered milk, vegetable oil, sugar, vitamins and minerals is given to mothers to feed their children at home. It's known as a ready-to-use therapeutic food.

"The peanut-butter feeding has been a quantum leap in feeding malnourished children in Africa. The recovery rates are a remarkable improvement from standard therapy," Manary said in a statement. He responded to additional questions by e-mail from Malawi.

International organizations are advocating similar programs, citing the work of Manary and others in their findings. Several suggested earlier this year that providing specially fortified foods for home use is one step that can help save the lives of hundreds of thousands of children.

Manary's team published a study about feeding children the peanut butter through Malawi's health-care system in Maternal and Child Nutrition this summer. It reinforced the promising results he'd seen over the years.

In his study, nearly 3,000 malnourished children were treated with the peanut-butter mixture. Of those, 89 percent of the severely malnourished children and 85 percent of the moderately malnourished children recovered.

At 12 rural health centers, village health aides identified malnourished children based on World Health Organization guidelines. They then followed up with the children every other week for up to eight weeks.

Research assistant Zachary Linneman, a freshman at Washington University who spent nine weeks in Malawi, said local health workers refer families to a feeding site, often a gathering spot under a tree.

There, children are weighed and assessed for malnutrition. Their mothers are given a two-week supply of the food, and told how much to feed their children. Children can eat other food while receiving the peanut-butter mixture for up to two months.

Traditionally, children who are severely malnourished are fed a milk-based porridge in hospitals, but would have to eat roughly 25 spoonfuls of porridge to equal the calorie density in one spoonful of the peanut butter mixture, researchers said.

The recovery rate for children given standard therapies is less than 50 percent, researchers said.

Linneman said it was hard to put into words what it meant to see the children's progress. At first, some would just "cry and cry and cry" in pain related to their malnutrition, he said.

Weeks later, he said, they'd laugh or play with their siblings.

•	Peanut butter project helps starving children Associated Press State & Local Wire, Thursday, Sept. 13, 2007 Byline: Betsy Taylor, Associated Press Writer

Story also ran in 16 others:  Asian News International, China Post (Taiwan), Hindustan Times (India), Live-PR.com (Austria), International Herald Tribune (France), Independent Online (South Africa), United Press International, News-Medical.net (Australia), St. Louis Post-Dispatch, DailyIndia.com (FL), RxPG NEWS (CA), DentalPlans.com (FL), HULIQ (NC), Belleville News Democrat (IL), KHQA (IL) and Earthtimes.org