It doesn’t get more inspiring than this.

Link: WSJ.com – In Battling Hunger, A New Advance: Peanut-Butter Paste by Roger Thurow (subscription required)

Plumpy’nut is the serendipitous result of one man’s breakfast-time revelation, which came after years of research by nutritionists. Made by a French company in the Normandy countryside, Plumpy’nut has been fed to some 30,000 children in Sudan’s Darfur region and aid officials there say it has helped cut malnutrition rates in half.

Unlike powdered-milk formulas, which have been the standard treatment for severe malnutrition, Plumpy’nut doesn’t need to be mixed with clean water, a rare commodity in famine-stricken regions. Medical officers aren’t needed to be on hand to mix ingredients. A mother simply snips a corner of the packet and squeezes the paste into her child’s mouth. As a result, nutritionists for the first time can take treatment beyond crowded emergency feeding centers and hospital settings, where disease can spread rapidly, and into the communities where malnourished children live.

The shift from emergency treatment to more-routine community care, "has long been a Holy Grail of humanitarianism," says Steve Collins, a director of Valid International, a United Kingdom organization specializing in famine relief. "It’s an amazing breakthrough when it comes to therapeutic feeding." A delicate mix of capitalism and humanitarianism, Plumpy’nut is made by Nutriset SAS, a private company specializing in food for humanitarian relief.