After years of research and testing, a nutritional snack meant to halt rampant malnourishment and stunting among Cambodian children has been developed in the form of a fish paste-filled wafer, which will be released on the market by 2017.
Malnourishment affects 32 percent of Cambodian children under the age of 5, often leading to permanent stunting and other developmental problems, according to the World Health Organization.
Nutritional supplements and fortified snacks can help fix the problem, but to be effective, the foods have to be ones that people will actually eat.
Three years ago, Unicef Cambodia partnered with Frank Wieringa, a researcher from the French government’s Institut de Recherche pour le Developpement, to develop a supplement comparable to existing nutritional products in Africa and Vietnam.
“What people have used in Africa has a taste based on peanuts, and that was tested here in Cambodia in 2009…but that didn’t work,” Mr. Wieringa said Friday.
Seeking to find a flavor better suited to local tastes, Mr. Wieringa developed a fish-flavored cube made from rice, soy and mung beans and containing micronutrients. Cambodians liked the flavor of the snack, but found its form unappetizing.
After he made the ingredients into a paste, added a more appealing wafer coating, and dialed back the potency of the fish flavor, the snack had a successful pilot test in July.
“The mothers and the children, they liked the food,” he said. “It’s a wafer filled with paste, and the paste contains all the nutrients.”
Three to four wafers a day—or about 75 grams—in addition to regular meals should provide the protein and vitamins necessary for children 2 years and under to properly develop, Mr. Wieringa said.
After a final test of the snack beginning in January, which will measure the impact of the wafers on children’s weight and height, the recipe will be released for factory production in late 2016 or early 2017, according to Iman Morooka, Unicef’s chief of communication in Cambodia.
