By Sarah Dallins,
Project Weight Loss staff writer
September 14, 2007An enriched peanut-butter mixture may help to the health recovery of thousand malnourished children in Malawi, according to a study conducted by researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
The peanut-butter mixture is rich in nutrients and contains peanuts, oil, added vitamins, minerals, sugar, and powdered milk. The product is made in a Malawian factory and given to mothers whose children are malnourished.
Twelve rural centers and almost 3,000 malnourished children in Malawi participated to the study. The results showed that eighty-nine percent of the 2,131 severely malnourished children who received the mixture recovered, compared to eighty-five percent of the 800 moderately malnourished children who also received the peanut-butter mixture.
The traditional treatment for children who suffer from moderate malnutrition involves a corn-based porridge at home. Those who suffer from sever malnutrition are fed with a milk-based porridge and get medical attention. Malnourished children who follow the standard recovery therapy have a fifty percent recovery rate. One spoonful of the concentrated mixture is equal to almost twenty-five spoonfuls of porridge, according to researchers.
Once the children are recovered, they usually stay healthy because their mothers are aware that malnutrition is the biggest threat to their children`s health and they make sure this doesn`t happen again, according to Mark Manary, pediatrician at St. Louis Children`s Hospital.
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