The Pumply Nut Children

Amongst the babies who were selected to attend the nursery school there were two "Plumpy Nut" children.

I had never seen a "Plumpy Nut" child before. And I certainly won’t forget it. They look like little buddhas, almost square shaped with unnatural rolls of fat and they are so overweight that when it comes to receiving food handouts, their mothers are told to go away because their children are too fat and don’t need any more. They have to manage on their own and feed them what they can. This was the case with these two children, little buddhas, who are no longer eating Plumpy Nut and are undergoing the “disinflation” process.
An international organisation is giving out Plumpy Nut in the Akaki area.
Akaki does have shops. There are local products available. They sell milk, meat, cereals and vegetables to those who are able to buy them. The children do not need therapeutic food, they need a normal, healthy and varied diet.
Plumpy Nut is more expensive and far less natural. It has no long term benefits for the children – it is just bread for today and hunger for tomorrow. It does not help local businesses and just provides wealth for the multinational French company which created and distributes the product.
Plumpy Nut is basically made up of peanuts with a few added vitamins and minerals.
International financial organisations such as the IMF and World Bank put pressure on African countries to designate extensive amounts of land for the cultivation of peanuts with Europe being the main importer. Instead of being put to good nutritional use in its own country, the African peanut is bought by European companies at giveaway prices, turned into the ¨plump peanut¨ and patented by companies like NutriSet and sold to charities and international organisations who work in areas suffering from famine for one euro per ration.
Everyone can draw their own conclusions from this but hunger seems to be a profit-making industry.