​What is it?
Peanut butter based ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF) is an energy dense edible paste that is stable and contamination resistant at room temperature.  A simple bakery mixer is used to combine powdered sugar, powdered milk, vegetable oil and peanut butter in roughly equal portions along with a small amount of vitamin/mineral powder. This is then packaged in daily usage containers of 250 grams.



Why these ingredients?
This recipe was developed in response to the dismal success rate in treating moderately to severely malnourished children in the hospital setting.  Due to their susceptibility to illness, hospitalized children in crowded pediatric wards are likely to acquire a life threatening infection before attempts at returning them to good nutritional health are effective. Peanut butter based RUTF is calorically dense, stable at room temperature and has a shelf life of 9 months to 2 years. This enables caregivers to treat their children at home and avoid further exposure to infections. Studies in other areas of Africa have shown success rates of 90% in restoring these children to normal weight-for-height ratios in an average treatment time of 8 – 12 weeks.