Category Archives: global hunger

November 7, 2011 · 12:39 am

Budget Debates in Congress Loom Over Yemen Crisis

Budget decisions made by the U.S. Congress in the coming weeks will have their effect on Yemen. Proposals for reducing international food aid would limit the U.S. ability to respond to the humanitarian crisis escalating in Yemen, already the poorest country in the Middle East.

Congress has proposed reducing funding for the U.S. Food for Peace plan, which in 2011 supported the UN World Food Programme’s (WFP) relief operation in Sana’a City and Northern Yemen. In addition, Food for Peace funded Save the Children’s voucher initiative, also in the North. This program showed promising results and if enough funding were available could be continued and expanded.

Currently, the UN World Food Programme and UNICEF are facing funding shortages for their relief programs in Yemen. The prospect of the U.S. decreasing its food aid budget is a forerunner of disaster for an already distressed humanitarian operation.

Before this year’s political unrest and violence unfolded, Yemen was already suffering a humanitarian crisis with high rates of child malnutrition. The year’s events have made this situation worse with prices of food and other basic goods on the increase. Food is becoming out of reach.

UNICEF recently reported “food security & nutrition indicators continue to be alarmingly low. Protein intake continues to decline, with increasing numbers of households reporting no consumption of meat (74.2%), fish (65.0%), chicken (34.2%), and eggs (43.3%).”

UNICEF, which surveys households in the Sana’a, Amran, and Hodeida governorates, highlights the alarming child malnutrition crisis. UNICEF says, “More households reported decreased number of meals among children <5yrs (33.6%) compared with the previous round (22.6%), with children in rural households being the most vulnerable to meal reduction (40.4%) compared with urban households (28.6%).”

The World Food Program USA is rallying support for increasing U.S. international food aid so there can be a stronger response for the crisis in Yemen and other countries.

WFP USA states, “Despite the fact that cuts to these critically important international programs cannot possibly make a meaningful contribution to reducing the debt or balancing the budget, unfortunately they are under threat this week as the Senate debates International Affairs accounts.”

A take action page has been set up to help citizens contact their representatives in Congress to oppose the budget cuts to international food aid.

Article first published as Budget Debates in Congress Loom over Yemen Crisis at Blogcritics.

 

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November 4, 2011 · 2:55 am

A School Lunch Hero for Disabled Children

In 1944 World War II was still raging. Students though at a school for disabled children in Cincinnati were facing their own daily struggles. Even having enough money for a school lunch was no easy task.

The school had a fund set up to provide lunches for the students. Keeping this fund resourced was the problem; that is, until the school received some help from someone very generous. As a result, the school lunch fund got a big boost which meant many more meals for the students.

Who was this mystery helper? It was one of their own students, 10 year old Charles Graff Jr. However, Graff had to study at home because he had the disease hemophilia. This is a disease where any slight cut could cause severe and even deadly bleeding. As Charles was confined to his home, a teacher from the school visited him there to give lessons.

Charles also had a hobby, collecting sales tax stamps. These were stamps placed on various items sold in stores, and you could redeem these stamps for cash from the government. So Charles kept collecting and as the Cincinnati Enquirer reported, he would give them to his teacher who would drop them off at the school. The tax stamps would then be redeemed, providing the school with a fund to buy the student lunches or sometimes even clothes.

Charles’s father, who worked at the Red Top Brewing Co., got co-workers involved to provide Charles with more stamps. More stamps meant more meals for the children.

Charles was ahead of his time. In 1944 there was no National School Lunch program; there was a limited luncheon program under President Roosevelt.

In 1946 President Harry Truman signed into law the National School Lunch Act, which provided free or reduced-price lunches for needy children all around the country. Healthier children meant better educated and more productive citizens for the future. It was a program built to last.

Charles, whose nickname was Bubbles, remained confined to his home and sometimes a wheelchair, due to his condition. That did not stop him though from being the “official” for many games his friends played on the street. Charles would officiate the games from his window.

The hemophilia took his life in 1950 at the age of 15. His legacy carries on. What Graff did in helping his classmates receive lunches is an example for all to follow. Fighting child hunger is about problem solving. You need people to find solutions, not excuses for why children cannot access basic foods.

Groups like Feeding America work to make sure children do not go hungry. This means strengthening the national school lunch program when required, or filling in gaps with after-school meals and summer feeding. For this reason, Charles Graff would make a great honorary ambassador for Feeding America.

Article originally published as Cincinnati’s School Lunch Hero for Disabled Children on Cincinnati.com and A School Lunch Hero for Disabled Children on Blogcritics.

 

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October 31, 2011 · 4:18 am

On Halloween Remember the World’s Hungry

This Halloween please remember the world's hungry (photo courtesy USA.gov)

It’s Halloween 2011 and time for the Wolfman, Dracula, and other monsters and ghosts to have their one night of the year. And let’s not forget Egypt’s famous Halloween contribution, the Mummy, and a couple of creatures that have appeared in this column when they helped with fundraisers, the Mothman and the Yeti.

Halloween means lots of candy too! In fact billions of dollars are spent on Halloween festivities. But this year please take a silent guest with you when trick or treating, or at your Halloween party. You can help one of the world’s nearly one billion hungry who on Halloween, or any other day, will hope to get maybe one meal if they are lucky.

There are many ways that Halloween can be combined with fighting hunger. In fact, in 1947 students used Halloween not to collect treats but to collect canned goods for the Friendship Train that fed the hungry in war-torn Europe.

On Halloween night, maybe in place of one of the treats, you could ask for a dollar to buy a week’s worth of meals for a hungry child. You can send the dollar to food aid agencies like the World Food Programme, Save the Children, Feeding America, UNICEF, Catholic Relief Services and others.

Or perhaps take a few minutes after coming home from trick or treating to play a few rounds of the online game Free Rice. For every correct answer you get, rice is donated to the hungry in developing countries.

There are many ways you can combine Halloween and fighting hunger. For this night is one of imagination. So the best ideas are to come: from you.

Article first published as On Halloween Remember the World’s Hungry on Blogcritics.

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October 30, 2011 · 8:20 pm

Biden Optimistic Global Hunger Struggle Can Be Won

Vice President Joe Biden spoke last Monday at the World Food Program USA award ceremony. He praised this year’s winners, Bill Gates and Howard Buffett, who have dedicated their talents to fighting hunger around the globe.

But Biden also made an admission of guilt—-for being optimistic that we can win the struggle against global hunger. This battle is now ongoing in the famine zones of East Africa, drought-ravaged Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan and numerous other regions.

Biden said, “I am often accused of being an optimist. I plead guilty, because I believe strongly in the human capacity-and desire-to build a better world. But I am particularly confident in our ability to feed the future because we have done it before.”

Biden talked about our support of South Korea, once a war-torn country with millions starving. Today South Korea has strong economic development and is a donor to the UN World Food Programme’s hunger-fighting missions.

Biden said, “Beginning in the 1950’s, we provided agricultural support-research, training, and partnerships with American firms-to South Korea, which was one of the poorest countries on the planet. Today, it is the world’s 15th largest economy, and a major trading partner responsible for hundreds of thousands of American jobs. ”

This is a long way from the South Korea that U.S. Army major Charles Arnold saw in 1951 during the Korean War. Arnold, who led a UN Civil Assistance team, said children arrived at feeding stations and “greeted us by rubbing their stomach and saying hungry.” After regular meals from Arnold’s team, the children took on a new, healthy look. They began to smile.

South Korea was also a country that benefited from the famous CARE packages that fed so many hungry people in Europe after World War II. President Truman urged Americans to send these CARE packages to feed those hungry and displaced by the Korean conflict.

As time went on, South Korea gained from agricultural development projects, similar to those Biden praised in the current “Feed the Future” campaign. South Korea was also one of the beneficiaries of the U.S. Food for Peace program started under President Eisenhower and expanded during President Kennedy’s administration.

George McGovern was Food for Peace director under President Kennedy. He writes that about 2 million South Korean children were receiving school meals under this hunger-fighting initiative. These meals made children healthier and better educated. This is a contrast to Afghanistan today, where low funding for the UN World Food Programme has meant that many impoverished children have lost their school meal ration.

In addition, proposed budget cuts to international food aid, including Food for Peace, will mean school feeding, Feed the Future and other aid projects will face cutbacks. This is a severe threat to peace.

Biden also said, “We will continue to support your work, by urging our friends in Congress to resist the urge to slash foreign aid budgets, because long-term solutions now can reduce the cost of massive relief efforts and instability later.”

Hunger-fighting programs currently make up less than one tenth of one percent of the federal budget. So slashing them does virtually nothing to eliminate the debt. Funding cuts though would devastate U.S. foreign policy. It is virtually impossible for countries to develop and have peace when generation after generation of children grow up malnourished and stunted in mind and body.

Biden finished his speech on Monday citing Nobel Peace Prize winner Norman Borlaug, who saved millions from hunger through his agricultural innovations. Borlaug said: “If you desire peace, cultivate justice, but at the same time cultivate the fields to produce more bread; otherwise there will be no peace.”

This is a message Congress needs to hear again and again as it makes crucial decisions about our foreign policy. The Food for Peace tradition of the U.S. is very much at stake in the current debates on the federal budget. What they decide in the coming days will have major implications on whether the struggle against global hunger can be won.

View a video of Biden’s speech.

Article first published as Biden Optimistic Global Hunger Struggle Can Be Won on Blogcritics.

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October 29, 2011 · 2:17 am

WFP and Aschiana Provide Food for Street Children in Afghanistan

Since last year I have been writing about a promising take-home ration program for street children in Afghanistan. The UN World Food Programme (WFP) and the Aschiana Foundation are teaming up on this initiative which helps Afghan children caught in a severe poverty trap. Below are some photographs of the food distributions courtesy of WFP.

In the coming weeks the Congress will be deciding whether to cut international food aid. Programs like this one will be in jeopardy if the U.S. Food for Peace and other hunger fighting programs are scaled back. WFP depends on voluntary donations from the U.S. and other countries. See my interview with Nora O’Connell of Save the Children for more about the budget crisis.

Assadullah Azhari of the World Food Programme took these photos of the WFP-Aschiana program:

WFP’s Food for Training Program in Afghanistan provides rations for street children at Aschiana Foundation Centers. Funding is needed by WFP and Aschiana to ensure these programs can be maintained and expanded to reach impoverished children. (photo courtesy WFP/Assadullah Azhari)





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October 28, 2011 · 3:26 am

Congress Needs to Invest in Nutrition at Home and Abroad

There is a lot of talk in Washington, D.C. about cutting spending. But if Congress is serious about looking for savings, then it should look to investing in child nutrition at home and abroad.

That investment will not only save us money, but will do more to build peace than any other initiative we can spend on.

Josette Sheeran, director of the UN World Food Programme, talks about how vital it is we invest in child nutrition. And how we save in the long run.

Children who do not receive proper nutrition, especially in the first thousand days of life, suffer lasting physical and mental damage. These future citizens will be less productive, less educated, and more susceptible to disease. This places a greater burden on everyone.

In the United States, hunger is a huge drain on the economy. Bread for the World reports: “A 2007 study co-authored by Harry Holzer of Georgetown University found that a conservative estimate of its cost to the economy was $500 billion per year, due largely to lower productivity and higher healthcare costs. Holzer points out that this amount has undoubtedly increased during the recession.”

In the U.S. we have to make sure that children can get access to the food they need to thrive. This includes filling in the gaps in food aid, such as the summer and after-school feeding programs.

Overseas nutrition plays a vital role in how effective our foreign policy will be. Look at the crisis points in Afghanistan, Sudan, Yemen, Pakistan, and elsewhere. All these countries have extremely high child malnutrition rates. If only more investment were put into fighting child hunger, steps could be taken toward peace and economic development.

Right now, though, Congress is proposing reducing international food aid as part of its budget cutting. Yet these programs currently make up less than one tenth of one percent of the federal budget. So even getting rid of them entirely would do almost nothing to solve the debt crisis. Reducing them will damage our foreign policy.

If Congress cuts food aid, they will essentially be increasing the burden on American taxpayers down the road. Hunger and malnutrition breed instability, disease, and even conflict. All these come with a price tag.

But if we make enough investment in nutrition, we can save many a child and country from despair, and form future partnerships in peace and trade.

Article first published as Want to Cut Spending and Build Peace? Invest in Child Nutrition on Blogcritics.

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October 28, 2011 · 3:17 am

Emergency Child Malnutrition Rates in Yemen

Children in Yemen are wasting away as conflict and a struggle for power continue in the beleaguered country. UNICEF just released findings from a nutrition study in the Abyan governorate in Southern Yemen. They found a shocking Global Acute Malnutrition rate among 18.6 percent of the children. The emergency threshold number is considered 15 percent.

When children do not receive proper nutrition, their growth is stunted in body as well as mind. They became more susceptible to illness.

While the South is suffering with malnutrition, so too is the North. In this area years of conflict between the government and rebels has taken its toll on the population. UNICEF says that “In Sa’ada, high malnutrition rates continue to be identified and children referred for treatment.

Out of a total of 234 children screened, 47 were referred to a therapeutic feeding center, while 128 were enrolled in outpatient therapeutic care (75% admission rate for severe acute malnutrition).”

A number of households in Yemen are reporting family members going to bed hungry. UNICEF says the capital Sana’a reported the highest percentage of household members going to bed hungry due to lack of food (67.5%) compared (to) Amran (45%) and Hodeida (25%). Food prices have risen steeply in recent months putting an extra crushing burden on the poor.

Even before this year of political unrest, hunger was a crisis in Yemen. This year had deepened this catastrophe to the highest levels of emergency.

Funding remains low for hunger relief missions by the UN World Food Programme and UNICEF. These agencies depend entirely on voluntary funding from the international community.

Supplies of the miracle food plumpy’nut, which can stave off malnutrition, are not available to all children. Funding for UNICEF and WFP would need to be increased. Without this supply, another generation of children will be burdened with long-term physical and mental impairment.

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October 26, 2011 · 3:30 am

Interview: Para Hunzai of the World Food Programme in Cambodia

The UN World Food Programme provides school meals to children in Cambodia (World Food Programme)

Para Hunzai of the UN World Food Programme (WFP) recently reported on the massive flooding taking place in Cambodia. Thousands of people have been displaced from their homes. Livelihoods have been lost as farm lands have been swept away. This crisis is taking a great toll on the many families in the country already living in poverty.

WFP provides assistance in Cambodia, including a school meals program which is a crucial safety net to help the poor overcome shocks like the floods. School feeding keeps children fed, healthy, and learning. Para recently took time to discuss the impact of this program and ways you can get involved to help feed and educate children in Cambodia.

How many children are currently receiving the WFP school meals?

During the coming school year (October 2011 – July 2012) 342,000 primary school children will receive hot nutritious breakfasts consisting of rice, yellow split beans, fish, salt and oil. Over 65,000 of the poorest families also receive a monthly scholarship of either 10 kg of rice per month or the cash equivalent of US$5 as an incentive to send children to school.

What has been the impact of the meals in terms of class attendance and performance?

An independent impact evaluation commissioned by WFP in 2010 showed that the impact of the school meals and food scholarship activities is evident on three levels:

Education: The impact of school meals was evident in higher enrolment (an analysis of Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MoEYS) data shows a 2-2.5 percent increase upon a school’s inclusion in the School Meals Programme, with a bigger increase for girls at 3 percent; furthermore, over the period 2002-2009 the increase in enrolment was 6.1 percent higher for schools that were part of the School Meals Programme); increased attendance (based on the household survey, food scholarship activities contributed to an annual increase of around 3 percent) and reduced drop-out rates (the School Meals Programme reduced drop-outs, especially in grades 2-4 by around 2.7 percent).

Nutrition: The School Meals Programme helped reduce morbidity among pupils in general and absence from school as a result of illness among girls. The potential for nutritional improvement through school meals was evidenced through a decrease in night blindness, attributed to the use of vitamin A-fortified vegetable oil.

Value-Transfer: The food scholarship constituted a predictable and regular value transfer to households worth 23.5 percent of household income. Among School Meals Programme beneficiaries the figure was 14 percent. Food scholarship activities enabled poor families to extend the period during which they did not have to buy rice and increased resilience to food shortages during lean periods, thereby reducing their vulnerability and increasing options for investing in assets. Households also confirmed that the food scholarship activities constituted a credible compensation for income lost if children were attending school, thereby reducing child labour.

Is there a plan to expand the program if needed?

WFP’s school meals and scholarship programme covers over 2,000 schools in 12 out of 24 provinces, reaching over half a million school children. Based on need, WFP’s Education Programme has been re-targeted to reach a greater number of children this school year. The Scholarship Programme is being scaled up from 900 to 2,000 schools (from 20,000 to 60, 000 households) (Oct 2011-July 2012). In addition, a pilot cash scholarship programme will reach 5,000 students in various schools. The expansion of the programme is reliant on resources and need and is re-assessed accordingly. WFP targets the most food-insecure provinces.

What are the prospects of a national school lunch program in Cambodia where all children can receive the meals?

They say breakfast is the most important meal of the day, this is especially true for children from poor households who sometimes eat little or no breakfast. This affects their ability to concentrate on lessons for the rest of the day. Therefore, WFP provides breakfasts before the school day commences. WFP has been implementing its school feeding programme in Cambodia since 1999. WFP is working closely with the Ministry of Education and with NGO partners to explore cost-effective options for possible nationwide scale-up in the future. Currently, WFP and the Ministry of Education target the poorest and most food insecure areas in 12 out of 24 provinces. There is currently no school lunch programme.

How can someone get involved and help school feeding in Cambodia?

Supporters of WFP can help create awareness of issues of food insecurity and malnutrition of vulnerable populations including primary school children in Cambodia. A recent national survey indicates that almost 40 percent of children under 5 are not as tall as they should be (stunted) and are not receiving the micronutrients needed to grow. Awareness-raising can be done by spreading the word of WFP activities through sharing communication and advocacy material published on the WFP website (for information on Cambodia, see http://www.wfp.org/countries/cambodia ).

WFP is 100 percent voluntarily funded, raising every dollar it spends. Donations are greatly welcome to ensure programmes continue to reach the desired impact. The website www.freerice.com is also a way to raise awareness, better your vocabulary, and raise money. The website lets users play word games. For every right answer users can donate rice directly to WFP beneficiaries including to the WFP school meals programme in Cambodia.

Article first published as Interview: Para Hunzai of the World Food Programme in Cambodia on Blogcritics.

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October 25, 2011 · 3:59 am

Plumpy’nut: A Modern-Day CARE Package

CARE Packages were sent to the hungry after World War II and this continued even during the Korean War and the early years of the Cold War struggle. In this photo, "Children of a refugee family from East Germany crowd close to get a better view of the foods in the CARE Package they received soon after they arrived in West Berlin." (photo courtesy CARE)

If you went shopping after World War II, you could walk into a store and make a life-saving purchase. Even if you were at home, you could do the same great deed simply through mail order. What was this mystery item people bought by the thousands after the war?

These were CARE packages to send to hungry people in countries lying in ruin. General Lucius Clay, commander of the American military government in Germany, made appeals to the public to send these packages. So did many others from all walks of life. This is how America reacted to the plight of those suffering overseas.

General Clay wrote, “when a CARE package arrived the consumer knew it was aid from America and that even the bitterness of war had not destroyed our compassion for suffering.”

You had several options when buying a CARE package. There were general rations which you could send to a family, or you could have these sent to an orphanage or hospital. Another option was to buy a CARE package specially designed for infants, one with baby food.

Well, today that CARE package for infants would come in the form of plumpy’nut, the miracle food recently profiled on the NBC Nightly News. This is a life-saving food for small children.

Plumpy’nut is peanut paste that comes wrapped in a small package, like many foods you find in grocery stores; except plumpy’nut is food specially designed to provide quick nutrients to severely malnourished children. It is widely used in areas struck by conflict, natural disasters, or extreme poverty. Plumpy’nut is easy to distribute because it does not require special preparation and storage.

In East Africa, where drought has caused massive food shortages, plumpy’nut is being distributed to children. It is saving their lives. Infants need proper nutrition in what is called the critical first 1,000 days. Without the nutrients, they will suffer lasting physical or mental damage.

Thousands of children have already starved to death in East Africa because of the food shortages, but those that get plumpy’nut can be saved.

Mindy Mizell of World Vision says, “One mom told me how she arrived in Puntland, Somalia with a severely malnourished toddler who wouldn’t play, stand, or smile…he took the plumpy’nut for a few weeks and was just fine! He looks great.”

A full supply of plumpy’nut is needed in East Africa to prevent more deaths.

Edesia, a Providence-based producer of plumpy’nut, has been running its factory 21 hours a day producing the life-saving food. Navyn Salem, Edesia’s director, said shipments are leaving almost every day to head to the East Africa famine zone. The plant was also fortunate to keep running through Hurricane Irene which tore through Providence and many other parts of the East Coast in August. Salem remarked, “we were very fortunate to be in a spot that was spared, phew!!”

Plumpy’nut production has to keep running at Edesia and other factories that produce the miracle food. But funding is always an issue, as aid agencies continually face this challenge. Not enough resources are committed by the international community toward fighting child hunger. The UN World Food Programme and other organizations are well short of funding to meet the demand.

Plumpy’nut is needed in many more areas of the globe: Afghanistan, Yemen, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Pakistan, and Haiti, just to name a few. All of these countries have high rates of child malnutrition, and plumpy’nut and its variations are desperately needed.

After World War II, stores like the H. & S. Pogue Company of Cincinnati even had displays of CARE packages. The Cincinnati Enquirer reported that upon Pogue’s grand opening of their display in 1947, Captain Victor Heintz made the first purchase. Heintz was a World War I veteran who served on the front lines in France. Years later, he was again coming to the aid of France in the form of a CARE package.

Another Cincinnati resident, Siegfried Deutsch, got started well before Pogue’s CARE outlet opened. Deutsch bought at least 35 CARE packages. The Enquirer said number 35 went to a poverty-stricken mother and her young daughter in Vienna, Austria, Deutsch’s homeland.

Retail stores today could offer an outlet for people to buy CARE plumpy packages for starving infants overseas. As the CARE package made such a difference saving lives, winning the peace, and rebuilding Europe after World War II, plumpy packages can do the same today.

Article first published as Plumpy’nut: A Modern-Day CARE Package on Blogcritics Magazine.

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October 23, 2011 · 3:29 am

Halloween 2011: Add Plumpy’nut Treat for Starving Children Overseas

Add plumpy'nut for starving children overseas to this year's Halloween celebration (photo courtesy usa.gov)

There is something special that could be added to this year’s Halloween festivities. In addition to treats, why not have plumpy’nut added to each bag of candy?

What is plumpy’nut? Essentially it is a precious treat for children in developing countries because it can save their lives. The plumpy’nut family of ready-to-eat foods is a peanut paste used to treat dangerous levels of malnutrition in children ages 0-5.

Without proper nutrients in these early years, severe physical and mental damage can take hold.  Plumpy’nut can nourish these small children and change their lives forever.  Right now small infant children in Somalia, Pakistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Yemen, Afghanistan and other countries are in desperate need of this food. There is extremely low funding for child feeding programs globally.

This is where Halloween comes in. If trick or treaters across America asked for some plumpy’nut with every doorbell ring, this food could be donated and save millions of lives around the world.

Since plumpy’nut is not something sold in stores, this particular treat would have to be in the form of a dollar. If you donated that dollar to the non-profit organization Edesia, which produces the life-saving food, it could then be channeled right into the production of plumpy’nut for starving children. Or you could contact the World Food Programme, Save the Children, Action Against Hunger or UNICEF who place the plumpy’nut orders with Edesia and other producers.

This plumpy’nut aspect of Halloween is something parents could set up in their neighborhoods. UNICEF has been running trick or treat campaigns since after World War II. You could also set up a plumpy’nut Halloween as part of their program.

So let this year’s Halloween have the classic themes of candy, full moon, Dracula, the Wolfman and others…but let’s welcome a new addition…..plumpy’nut. Treats for all. A Halloween for the ages.

Learn more about plumpy’nut from Rhode Island based Edesia.

Article first published as Halloween: Trick or Treat or Plumpy’nut on Blogcritics.

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