SCIENTIFIC FACT:

Peanut butter sandwich a humble hero (Donna Jacobs, 5/26/08, The Ottawa Citizen)

Behold the peanut butter sandwich.

On whole-grain bread, this portable fast-food marvel is a complete source of all 20 protein-building amino acids found in meat, fish, eggs and cheese.

The "PBS" is the modern take on the ancient cultural discovery that has saved mankind over millennia: Mix a grain (wheat, corn, rice, oats and barley) with a legume (beans, peas, peanuts, soybeans) and you get a complete set of amino acids. [...]

Today, the peanut appears in its newest reincarnation as the nutritional powerhouse Plumpy'nut.

As Milton Tectonidis, a Paris-based nutrition specialist for Médecins Sans Frontières, told the International Herald Tribune during Niger's 2005 food crisis, Plumpy'nut can restore a starving baby whose skin sags over tiny bones to normal roundness in two to four weeks.

"This product, it's beyond opinion," said Mr. Tectonidis. "It's documented; it's scientific fact. We've seen it working. With this one product, we can treat three-quarters of children on an outpatient basis."

In his optimistic report, journalist Michael Wines wrote: "Plumpy'nut, which comes in a silvery foil package the size of two grasping baby-sized hands, is 500 calories of fortified peanut butter, stuffed with milk, vitamins and minerals.

"Since the packets came into the hands of relief organizations during the Darfur crisis in Sudan, they have been revolutionizing emergency care for severely malnourished children who are old enough to take solid food, by taking care out of crowded field hospitals and straight into mothers' homes.

"The prescription given to mothers here is simple: give one baby two packets of Plumpy'nut each day. Watch him wolf them down. Wait for him to grow. Which he will, almost immediately: badly malnourished babies can gain one to two pounds a week eating Plumpy'nut."

Ready to eat, it eliminates the need for local water, so often dirty and harbouring disease organisms. It is cheap -- 14 foil packets a week (a four-week supply costs $20). It has a two-year shelf life. It can be given at home, replacing the traditional hospital treatment of vitamin-laced milk.