Did you know that you can improve your child’s weight and nutrition by simply using a peanut butter with oats?
Dr. Mark Manary
Founder & CEO, Project Peanut Butter
For the past two decades, Project Peanut Butter has treated more than a million children for malnutrition using their breakthrough treatment of RUTF (ready-to-use therapeutic food). Now, Project Peanut Butter continues to revolutionize therapy for malnutrition with the incorporation of a new ingredient — oats.
Oat-RUTF is 18 percent oat by weight, with oat replacing some, but not all, of the sugar and peanut. Oat-RUTF is superior because the oat replaces the hydrogenated vegetable oil additive (emulsifier) that helps to control oil separation. Emulsifiers are detrimental to gut health as they deplete the mucus lining of the gut, reducing the capacity to properly absorb nutrients. On average a child needs 100 sachets of traditional RUTF in order to fully recover, whereas only 86 sachets of the oat-RUTF are needed to achieve the same weight gain and recovery. Compared to using a traditional RUTF recipe, which is primarily peanut, feeding severely malnourished children with Oat-RUTF results in a 25 percent increase in recovery and a 40 percent reduction in deaths. These data comes from a randomized, double-blind, controlled clinical trial conducted in Sierra Leone among over 1500 children. Additionally, the ingredients in Oat-RUTF cost 15 percent less than standard RUTF. This new recipe is truly an example of empowering the community with new technology. Distribution of Oat-RUTF on a larger scale begins in 2021.