U.S. grains needed for new USAID products

Alberghine outlined the six projects funded in 2011. Some are multi-year projects that could rely on continued funding from Congress, which worries many of those involved in the programs, because of the budget cutting under way.

Kansas State University is working in Tanzania working with three fortified blended foods—sorghum and soy blend, sorghum and cowpea blend and corn-soy blend.

Joint Aid Management is working in Mozambique developing a soy-based vanilla flavored powder for mixing with water.

The organization of Meds & Food for Kids, associated with the University of Illinois, is working in Haiti to test Mamba Lespri, which translates from Creole as “smart peanut butter,” to provide supplemental food for school children.

The International Partnership for Human Development is proceeding with a dairy-based micronutrient fortified supplementary dairy paste in Guinea and Bissau.

The Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH) is working in Cambodia to gain acceptance of an “enhanced strain of ultra rice” with high levels of iron and Vitamin A. 

Hormel Foods is working in Guatamala with its product “Spammy,” which is a canned poultry-based supplemental spread that can be flavored to the taste of different countries’ population preference, and is curry flavored in the initial stages of development.

All the products have to meet three main goals, cost effectiveness, nutritional value and quality assurance. Another factor to any product is the ability to assure its stability in the conditions of storage available within undeveloped countries. But the biggest end goal also has to be acceptance by the undernourished population.

The ultra rice project is an example of trying to gain acceptance by the public. Ultra rice actually is rice ground into powder, fortified with iron and Vitamin A, made into a paste, extruded into the shape of rice kernels and dried.  The fortified ultra rice is then mixed with conventional white rice in a one to 100 kernel ratio. Until cooked, the ultra rice has a slightly different appearance, and the concern has been that people who only eat white rice, but need more vitamins and minerals, have been known to pick the ultra rice out of the mix.

The cost of feeding the hungry has to be a major consideration in any program because of the limited resources and the large malnourished population. Again ultra rice is an example, in the small scale operations of today the cost to fortify rice is about $15 to $20 per metric ton, and the project director for the ultra rice project with PATH, Dipika Matthias, said the process has to be less than $10 per metric ton to be a competitive food source.

With the fortified blended foods, which are cooked into a porridge, an early product that has recently been improved is the corn-soy blend plus plus (CSB++) product, it is in a category of foods that can feed the moderately acute malnutritioned for 16 cents to 38 cents per day, according to presentations at the conference.

It was obvious from most of the presentations that processed foods and supplements are necessary and that whole grains or unprocessed commodities are not the most successful approach to treating extreme malnutrition.