The Peanut Solution

By Andrew Rice

Sept. 2010--Like most tales of great invention, the story of Plumpy’nut begins with a eureka moment, in this case involving a French doctor and a jar of Nutella, and proceeds through the stages of rejection, acceptance, evangelization and mass production.

The product may not look like much—a little foil packet filled with a soft, sticky substance—but its advocates are prone to use the language of magic and wonders.

What is Plumpy’nut?
Sound it out, and you get the idea: it’s an edible paste made of peanuts, packed with calories and vitamins, that is specially formulated to re-nourish starving children.

Since its widespread introduction five years ago, it has been credited with significantly lowering mortality rates during famines in Africa.

Children on a Plumpy’nut regimen add pounds rapidly, often going from a near-death state to relative health in a month.

In the world of humanitarian aid, where progress is usually measured in subtle increments of misery, the new product offers a rare satisfaction: swift, visible, fantastic efficacy.

Plumpy’nut is also a brand name, however, the registered trademark of Nutriset, a private French company that first manufactured and marketed the paste.

It was not the intention of Plumpy’nut’s inventor, a crusading pediatrician named André Briend, to create an industry around Plumpy’nut. 

Briend, his friends say, was always personally indifferent to money.

One element of genius in Briend’s recipe was precisely its easy replicability: it could be made by poor people, for poor people, to the benefit of patients and farmers alike.

Most of the world’s peanuts are grown in developing countries, where allergies to them are relatively uncommon, and the rest of the concoction is simple to prepare.

On a visit to Malawi, Briend whipped up a batch in a blender to prove that Plumpy’nut could be made just about anywhere.

Others, however, quickly realized that the miracle product had more than just moral value.

Nutriset has aggressively protected its intellectual property, and the bulk of Plumpy’nut production continues to take place at Nutriset facilities in France.

UNICEF, the world’s primary buyer, purchases 90 percent of its supply from that factory, according to a 2009 report prepared for the agency.

Internationally, there has been a vituperative debate over who should control the means of production, with India going so far as to impose sharp restrictions on Plumpy’nut, calling it an unproven colonialist import.

Elsewhere, local producers are simply ignoring the patent.

In Haiti, two manufacturers are making products similar to Plumpy’nut independently of Nutriset: one is Partners in Health, the charity co-founded by the prominent global-health activist Paul Farmer.

Partners in Health harvests peanuts from a 30-acre farm or buys them from a cooperative of 200 small holders.

It is planning to build a larger factory, but for now the nuts are taken to the main hospital in Cange, where women sort them in straw baskets, roast them over an outside gas burner, run them through a hand grinder and mix all the ingredients into a paste that is poured into reusable plastic canisters.

Peanuts in Haiti and throughout the developing world have a high incidence of aflatoxin, a fungus that can sicken children, especially fragile ones.

But Partners in Health says the product, which it calls Nourimanba, is safe.