While thinking about your suggestion a little, I learned about RUTF (peanut-based ready-to-eat meals used to treat child malnutrition) which appear to be rather established. Using the UNICEF 2024 numbers they distributed enough RUTF to feed half a million people throughout the year if we go by calories[1]
According to UNICEF:RUTF-price-data a box of 150 meals (92 g which should correspond to ~500 kcal) costs them around $50 (using 2023 numbers and rounding up). Boiling this down to 2 000 kcal per day, this corresponds to a $1.33/day nutrition.
A few important aspects of RUTF are different than your suggestion (aimed at temporary treatment of malnutrition in children and not general nutrition for all ages, the prices above are not consumer prices, main ingredients differ, RUTF avoids the requirement of adding safe water which might not be easily available), but it seems to me that this supports your cost-estimate at least for large-scale purchases.
I think that together with existing consumer brands for meal-replacement powders, RUTF could be a second great reference for a similar and established idea :)
Of course, RUTF is used as a temporary treatment so that the amount corresponds to a potential of 5.1 million treated children according to the linked dashboard
Yes, I’ve validated the concept with RAH’s Philippines Executive Director. Their cost at scale for meal packs is in that range, similar-ish content.
I’m planning to add a comparison to that, plumpy’nut, huel, mealsquares, soylent etc to the website.
Ideally, our meals would be dehydrated bars that can be eaten as-is, with the possibility to rehydrate it into a crumbly format that can be used as a meat-replacement ingredient to cook any culturally-appropriate local recipe.
This is an interesting idea, thanks for sharing!
While thinking about your suggestion a little, I learned about RUTF (peanut-based ready-to-eat meals used to treat child malnutrition) which appear to be rather established. Using the UNICEF 2024 numbers they distributed enough RUTF to feed half a million people throughout the year if we go by calories[1]
According to UNICEF:RUTF-price-data a box of 150 meals (92 g which should correspond to ~500 kcal) costs them around $50 (using 2023 numbers and rounding up). Boiling this down to 2 000 kcal per day, this corresponds to a $1.33/day nutrition.
A few important aspects of RUTF are different than your suggestion (aimed at temporary treatment of malnutrition in children and not general nutrition for all ages, the prices above are not consumer prices, main ingredients differ, RUTF avoids the requirement of adding safe water which might not be easily available), but it seems to me that this supports your cost-estimate at least for large-scale purchases.
I think that together with existing consumer brands for meal-replacement powders, RUTF could be a second great reference for a similar and established idea :)
Of course, RUTF is used as a temporary treatment so that the amount corresponds to a potential of 5.1 million treated children according to the linked dashboard
Yes, I’ve validated the concept with RAH’s Philippines Executive Director. Their cost at scale for meal packs is in that range, similar-ish content.
I’m planning to add a comparison to that, plumpy’nut, huel, mealsquares, soylent etc to the website.
Ideally, our meals would be dehydrated bars that can be eaten as-is, with the possibility to rehydrate it into a crumbly format that can be used as a meat-replacement ingredient to cook any culturally-appropriate local recipe.