An integrated approach to tackling malnutrition

Chronic malnutrition is a social crisis and a real challenge in Guatemala, with the fifth place of chronic malnutrition in the world[1] and the highest in Latin America, where 46.5 per cent of the children under five faces the terrible consequences of chronic malnutrition.  The implications are not only represented in stunting, but also in their health condition and cognitive development. The problem is not that we have a country with little people, it is all the implications that chronic malnutrition brings to childrens’ lives and to the development of the country. In a study of the costs of malnutrition, it said that in Guatemala the daily costs of Malnutrition were around $8,800 million.[2]

As a response to this social problem, Ted Fischer, a professor of anthropology and director of the Center for Latin American Studies at Vanderbilt University, teamed up with The Shalom Foundation and INCAP to build Nutriplus, a social enterprise that has created an integrated approach to tackle malnutrition:

The Product
Maní+ a 40g Ready to Use Supplementary Food (RUSF) made of peanut paste, milk and micronutrients. Maní+ helps mothers bring adequate nutrition to their children; it doesn’t need any preparation or refrigeration. It provides 21 micronutrients based on the children’s nutritional deficiencies of the Central American region. It provides 6 grams of protein, which is the major deficiency of the Guatemalan diet.

The acceptability of Maní+ was measured in the community of Paapa, Alta Verapaz Guatemala, where it was determined that 100% among 43 children from 6 to 24 months of age (and their mothers) liked it.[3]

National surveys show that chronic malnutrition starts really early in life, children of 6 months show already 32.3 per cent under height[4].  The reduction of chronic malnutrition in Guatemala has been slow. Since 1965, the reduction has been around 0.5% annual[5]. If we want a positive impact in the health, nutrition and life skills of the Guatemalan children, we need to act faster.

Creating consumer awareness
We have developed a nutritional program to educate and empower mothers to make nutritional decisions for their families due lack of education in our country in this matters most of them don't even noticed the Malnutrition in their own children. Maní+ was created to complement the actions in the country and it should be accompanied by other practice interventions, such as breastfeeding, food introduction, vaccination, micronutrients supplementation, deworming, educational processes for behavioural change related to child care.

Building local supply chains
Understanding the importance of sustainability and its impact on communities, we want to link our production to local supply chains. We are trying to strengthen markets for farmers and open doors for new opportunities that they can take in any number of directions. We want this to be a viable economic enterprise whose end is not profit but rather maximising a public good. Here in Guatemala exist a farmers who are working in peanut plantation, however the technology which they are using to harvest and storage the peanut is not the best, so our local peanut has aflatoxin, so we are working with them to improve their technology in order to avoid this problem in the plantation and in the near future we will start to buy the peanut in our country.

Maní+ is the first of many nutritious products targeted to different segments of the population. Our goal is to expand our product line to help families by providing better food for scholar-aged children, helping mothers to have an adequate diet on their pregnancies, helping patients with pathologies that need special diets, among others products.

Maní+ is currently sold in non-governmental organizations, which then give it away in their nutrition programs. But our goal is to gradually move into a B2B model to sell retail to the consumers. There is a huge market in the cities, so our idea is to lounge our product next year and start to sale there and with this sales started to supporting our programs in the communities.

The beneficiaries are people living in poverty, they often do not have indoor plumbing or bathrooms; electricity is a luxury. And their poverty is obviously one of the causes of malnutrition. At the same time, we sometimes forget, in our shock, that even such poor families do have some disposable income. They buy treats for the children when they can, and a growing number have cheap prepaid cell phones. This does not mean that they are not poor; they are. But they are also a market.

Some years back, the business professor C.K. Prahalad wrote a piece on "the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid." He found that while margins are thinner and portion sizes and prices have to be smaller, there is a huge market among the world’s poor. We are trying to tap into that, but with a product that can help build up a family's human capital.

Through the years we have been honoured with recognitions: 1st Place in Social Innovation Category at Latin America VIVA Schmidheiny Award 2016, 1st Place Social Entrepreneurship Award by Alterna Impact 2014; Nutritional innovation Award “Fernando Molina Arias” of the University of Costa Rica, and 2nd Place in the national competition of innovation of Guatemala City.

This blog is part of the December 2016 series on Inclusive Business models delivering nutrition, in partnership with DFID and GAIN. Don’t miss the webinar series in January 2017 on Marketing nutrition to the BOP.
 

More information

[1] https://www.unicef.org/publications/index_68661.html (not longer available)

[2] http://icefi.org/sites/default/files/contamos-4.pdf (not longer available)

[3] Acceptability and Use of Maní+, a Ready to Use Supplementary Food, in Guatemala 

[4] http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PBAAD728.pdf (not longer available)

[5] http://www.incap.int/portaleducativo/index.php/es/recursos/reservorio-s… (not longer available)