Cambodia tests ‘super rice’ to fortify its children
For breakfast, it’s rice. For lunch, it’s rice again, and for dinner – rice. Sometimes, Cambodian Un Koy says, her mother will prepare some beans or carrots, and on very special days even fish or pork. …
Across Asia, rice is the most widely consumed staple. That’s especially true in Cambodia, where it constitutes 70 percent of the rural population’s calorie intake. For Koy, the rice diet – low in zinc, iron, and vitamins B and D – has led to underdevelopment, say specialists. Health professionals say some 1 billion children suffer from similar malnourishment worldwide.
Now, a team of researchers from the Marseille-based Institute of Research for Development in Cambodia are close to bringing that number of malnourished children down by fortifying their staple diet with nutrients. The IRD team is currently evaluating a survey among 2,500 school children who participated in a pilot free meal project, substituting their World Food program free meal of rice, with fortified rice once a day on every school day for breakfast. …
“Food insecurity has become much less of a problem in Southeast Asia in recent years. But the food people get is lacking quality. So they eat a lot of rice, which gives them energy, but no nutrients,” says senior IRD researcher Frank Wieringa, who leads the project. …
“The main aim of the school meals was to get kids to go to school and make sure they are not hungry, because that makes it difficult to study. But now, we have learned that it is a beautiful way to add essential vitamins and minerals to the diet of the children,” says Wieringa. …
Currently, the WFP annually spends about $23 to feed one child one meal per day in a Cambodian school. By spending an extra $0.50 per year on each child, the organization could have a local factory produce and fortify that rice and have better results. …
