There's always room for Plumpy'nut
■"Hope for Hungry Children Arriving in a Foil Packet: A Peanut-Based Paste is Lauded in Africa," by Michael Wines, New York Times, 8 August 2005, p. A7.
Fascinating story worth reading (click here for full) on how a French invention for feeding starving babies and kids is working a significant number of miracles in Africa. Instead of the old, costly, complicated, and drawn out process of reviving starving babies and kids with milk as the delivery mechanism, Plumpy'nut uses peanut butter, and the paste is so reliable and so simple to administer (shove it in their mouths two times a day) that mothers can do it without any oversight from doctors.
Kids gain 1-2 pounds a week eating the stuff.
Lesson: much of what ends up shrinking the Gap is simple stuff: better foods, better crops, better materials. We don't all have to be poorer for Africa to escape poverty.
This is a big theme of BFA's chapter 5 ("We Have Met the Enemy . . .").