To Susan Berger's excellent post, I would like to add that I have been
involved as a consultant on a project through Novartis to fortify toddler
cereal foods in Mali.  This is being done through teaching people how to
'malt' the grain before pounding it into flour to make baby porridge --
malting increases the nutritional content of the porridge.  This projects
includes finding baobab trees that naturally have high levels of Vitamin C,
and grafting stock from these trees onto roots from other, hardier baobabs,
and then growing these trees in nurseries and providing several of them to
each of Mali's thousands of rural villages.  Evenutally, leaves from these
naturally-rich trees would be the source of leaves used in traditional
sauces for people of all ages.

I know we ten to become very cynical and jaded about formula marketers, and
certainly lots of projects are well-intentioned but misguided, and can have
disastrous unintended consequences.

However, we also have to remember that *even where all children are
breastfed for several years,* people have nutrition and health problems and
kids die from deficiencies of protein, or micro-nutrients or calories, or
lack of access to immunizations, or antibiotics and that there are literally
thousands of health and nutrition projects going on around the world that DO
reduce malnutrition and DO save lives.

Kathy Dettwyler



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