PowerFlour For Panama

February 19, 2002

The PowerFlour Action Network has begun a year long project in PANAMA with the cooperation of Nutre Hogar (Spanish for Nutrition Home), an organization dedicated to fighting child malnutrition in that country. The project is being directed by Dr. Sondra King, Professor of Family Nutrition at Northern Illinois University in Dekalb, IL, who volunteers for PFAN. Dr. King first visited the feeding sites in July and recently initiated the feeding regimen of an oatmeal porridge supplemented with and without PowerFlour (PF). The cooks and assessment team, headed by Mr. Paul Erickson, will administer carefully coded samples at several locations to native children. What the PFAN hopes to achieve, besides helping the children with an improved diet, is to certify that the addition of PF will result in weight, height and body size gains vs. an unsupplemented diet.

Inspite of the numerous reported successes that PF has achieved around the world in some 48 countries it has reached, PFAN has yet to have substantive data proving its effectiveness to the technical community. By publishing a technical paper that is subject to peer review, Dr. King hopes to show whether or not PF is effective through this clinical intervention. PFAN plans to complete the study by 2002 so that UNICEF and other children's organizations will want to establish ongoing PF feeding systems for improving diets in the developing world. PFAN has for the past several years been trying to partner with other children's hunger initiatives in order to be more effective in reaching those who are undernourished.

This study will look at the usefulness of the powerful malt flour enzymes present that convert the starchy diets to more effective and easily digested calories for the children. For over 40 years, UNICEF data has demonstrated that up to 40,000 children die each month due to their failure to adjust to the complex diet they are limited to once they are weaned from the breast or bottle.

This study is being funded by PFAN through donations from Rotary District 6270 of southeastern Wisconsin, a generous gift from Sheboygan's Immaculate Conception Catholic Church and the Roger Briess Memorial Fund.

The next study planned will be in association with Monterrey Tech of Monterrey, MEXICO. PFAN is supplying PF to researcher Dr. Sergio Serna for a pre-blended dry mix he has developed. This nutritionally well-balanced product will be released widely to Mexican children in 2002.