Easy to make, low cost, nutritionally rich

Two thousand million individuals are malnourished.  Malnutrition, not to be confused with undernutrition, is characterised by a diet that is insufficiently diverse, being based almost entirely on seeds of cereals and local pulses with precious little of animal products, green vegetables and fruit.  Such diets, even when they reach or surpass the 2,200 Calories theoretically required for survival are deficient in essential amino-acids, vitamins and minerals.  Now, apart from starch, green leaves contain more of these nutrients than do grains do.  So a diet combining leaves and seeds would be the most practical, complete, available and inexpensive for those who are malnourished.

The problem: humans are not herbivores.  We can’t digest the fibre in leaves.

The solution:  To make the rich components of green leaves available to humans as a concentrated extract after having eliminated the fibre in the leaves and stalks of green vegetables.  In the high Andean plateaux, the Indians have been  doing this for thousands of years by drinking the juice squeezed from mashed Lucerne (Medicago sativa) to combat the exhaustion caused by anaemia.
Such an extract already exists and has been sold since 1975.  Known as “PX”, it is used mainly for its pigmenting potency in the diets of chicken and laying hens.  12 000 tonnes of PX are now produced each year.

APEF has been able to establish the value of this Leaf Concentrate (LC) from lucerne as human food (when made by a slightly modified process), taking up the pioneering work of the British charity “Find Your Feet”.  The British had shown, since the 1960’s, that Leaf Concentrate from various leaves not normally eaten as human food, when added to deficient diets, proved to be as good as equivalent supplements of milk and better than pulses.
However, their small “village production units” produced only 3 – 5 kg of LC a day, at high cost.  The system has never survived without subsidy!
On the other hand, with industrial production, the cost is very low, about 4 € (ex-works) per child per year (for children the recommendation is 5-10 g/day, for adults 10-15 g/day).

APEF has undertaken numerous studies, concentrating principally on changes in height, weight, haemoglobin level and general condition, in order to examine the effects of supplementing the normal, existing diets of children, their mothers, the sick and the aged.  All were positive.

All the results agree :

For the mothers:
- Higher birth-weight for their children
- An increased quantity of breast milk

For the children :
- Easing of the delicate period of weaning
- Appetite returns, weight increases
- Speeding up of growth
- Reduction or disappearance of diarrhoea in a week or two
- Effectiveness against marasmus and kwashiorkor
- Better response to education

For all recipients :
- Regression or elimination of anaemia in 3 months in more than 70 % of cases,
- Diminished incidence and duration of ailments associated with malnutrition (infections of the upper respiratory system, the skin and eyes)
- Rapid improvement in several aspects of the blood picture, especially in the levels of haemoglobin (Iron) and of retinol (Vitamin A)
- Better resistance to infections, e.g. Noma in children
- Improved general condition in cases of serious infections : tuberculosis, AIDS, etc.