Lost Crops of Africa Volume I: Grains (1996) / Chapter Skim
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Appendix D: Potential Breakthroughs in Child Nutrition
Appendix D: Potential Breakthroughs in Child Nutrition
Pages 312-317
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From page 312... ...
The tragedy for Africa's millions of malnourished children is that comparable bridging foods are unavailable to, or at least far beyond, a family's financial reach. A child in Africa, therefore, faces a cataclysmic change from a balanced and hygienic liquid diet of mother's milk to an unbalanced solid adult food that is often very unwholesome.
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From page 313... ...
Given the extent of present malnutrition, one could be forgiven for concluding that household weaning foods are an impossibility for rural Africa that appropriate ingredients must be unavailable, or that the people cannot make foods appropriate for children. But a number of knowledgeable nutritionists and food technologists believe that bridging foods for the critical nutritional years of each new generation can indeed be produced locally and cheaply.
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From page 314... ...
Both techniques require only a minimum of equipment and appear to be good ways to turn stiff starchy porridges into liquid weaning foods.2 MALTED FOODS Given what is currently available in an African village, probably nothing can compare with malting as a means for carrying rural babies across the nutritional abyss between mother's milk and adult foods. The previous appendix discussed malted grains and the potential they offer in and of themselves.
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From page 315... ...
Experiences in Tanzania suggest that the concept of liquefying porridges for baby food is not an impractical dream. In the early 1980s, scientists at the Tanzania Food and Nutrition Centre found that small quantities of flour from germinated sorghum or finger millet could be used to thin the traditional viscous porridges.3 They called their product "Power Flour." When a spoonful was added during cooking, porridges thick enough to hold up a spoon turned liquid within 10 minutes.
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From page 316... ...
However, finger millet is a better choice: it has a higher amylase activity; it has no tannins; it develops no potentially toxic materials on germination;5 it is rich in calcium and methionine, both of which are needed for child growth; its malt has a pleasant aroma and taste; and, finally, it does not mold or deteriorate during germination. Considering the fact that the technology and raw materials are common in most village situations, why has this immensely beneficial practice not been more widely used?
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From page 317... ...
Thus, fermented doughs, such as ogi or ugi (a similar product widely eaten in East Africa) , might be liquefied with Power Flour into forms that weanlings can "drink." In that way children could ingest more, and the double processing would likely produce highly digestible foods, easy for any young, old, or sick bodies to assimilate.
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