Share:

Upgrade the Food Aid

Ready-To-Use Therapeutic Foods (RUTF's) are in short supply.

Please hold hearings, pass laws, and change the current mindset concerning the food we export as food aid. Provide incentives to manufacturers capable of creating and producing their own version of plumpy'nut. Plumpy'nut is currently produced in third world countries near sites that aid populations with widespread hunger and malnutrition. We need more plumpy'nut-like products - Ready-To-Use Therapeutic Foods (RUTF's) can be used to treat malnutrition without clean water, without hospitalization, and without cold storage. We simply need more because only 3% of the malnourished children have access to plumpy'nut. That leaves 20 million or so children that are given porridge-type food that is not fortified with vitamins and nutrients. It helps with the hunger pangs, but they still just get sicker. They need nutrition, not bird seed. There is no longer an excuse for industrialized countries to send food aid that we would not feed our own children.