SCIENTISTS DEVELOP 'INSTANT' AID FOOD
The puffy product is milled to make a porridge-like meal when warm water is added. Photo via Agricultural Research Service, USDA, Peggy Greb.
After a decade of research, the USDA has released an "instant" cooked meal better suited for feeding hungry people abroad.
Street boys eat near a garbage dump in New Delhi
The technology to produce the instant corn-soy blend was modeled after other food production machines that churn out popular foods such as cheese and cereal puffs.
Most aid foods can travel well, but the oils in them often spoil, ruining whole batches at a time, according to one USDA article. Also, nutrients in the foods would settle at the bottoms of storage bags, affecting their distribution in each serving by the time they reached people receiving the products.The new instant corn-soy blend relies on an older technique called extrusion, where ingredients are mixed, cooked and pushed through an opening into a desirable shape. Often, machines cook the product for a short period of time at high heats and pressures. Researchers, including Charles Onwulata who led the effort, helped create these crunchy, puffy pieces of food.
Hunger figures - graph showing the number of undernourished people in the world.During the final process, the puffs are milled into a fine, powdery blend, which makes it easier to ration and mix warm water into. Unlike previous foods, the product doesn't spoil and retains the same amount of nutrients throughout.
Que for food
Researchers also sought to include more vitamin supplements that young children need during development. Often, these are the individuals who need humanitarian aid the most during humanitarian efforts.
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