Valid Nutrition

New commitment - added in 2017 Scaling up production of innovative efficacious recipes of Ready to Use products, produced locally, for treatment of both severe, moderate acute and chronic malnutrition. Our emphasis on manufacture in developing countries, is intended to stimulate improvements in agricultural markets and food manufacturing industries, providing jobs and an economic boost.

Reported progress

The UN’s adherence to the (non-evidence-based) stipulation that ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF) must contain at least 50% of protein from dairy continues to block the use of all plant-based alternatives. This 2007 stipulation corresponded to the only recipe available at the time. Since then, robust data from 3 RCTs (in 3 countries) shows that a new amino-acid enhanced, plant-based RUTF is not inferior to the milk-based recipe for all the primary treatment outcomes and is superior in the treatment of anaemia and iron deficiency. VALID Nutrition is working to generate additional evidence-based support of efficacy that will put the benefits of the charity’s amino –acid enhanced plant-based ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF) recipe beyond refute. The recipe that VALID has successfully developed was designed to be conducive to sustainable, local production in Africa, which brings a multitude of benefits including, decreasing cost (thus improving coverage/treatment), reducing climate impact, improving the resilience of local food supply chains, as well as many broader economic and social development benefits. In the context of Covid-19 where international supply chains have been disrupted and now compounded by an energy crisis and global food supply issues emanating from the war in Ukraine, this more cost-effective, plant-based recipe offers genuine choice and competition in the market as well as delivering superior treatment of iron deficiency and replenishing iron stores. Alongside our advocacy efforts regarding approval of our plant based RUTF recipe for global use, VALID continues to work with stakeholders to establish a public/private collaboration to apply VALID’s innovative, food technology IP to other product formats to enable us to bring alternative plant-based recipes to the African market, that can be manufactured and sold immediately, (with no approval from the WHO required) to treat and prevent other forms of malnutrition.