Bill Gates: Let them eat Cheez Whiz.

[Guest guest]

Gates Fights Malnutrition With

Cheese, Ketchup and Other Fortified Food Items

RACHEL ZIMMERMAN / Wall Street Journal 9may02

Let them eat Cheez Whiz?

 

An international consortium led by Bill Gates's charitable foundation plans

to address malnutrition around the world by offering economic incentives to

Kraft, Procter & Gamble and other food companies to bring fortified

processed foods and food commodities to impoverished nations.

 

The unusual program, funded mostly with $50 million from the Bill & Melinda

Gates Foundation, has signed up Kraft Foods Inc., Procter & Gamble Co., H.J.

Heinz and vitamin manufacturers Roche and BASF Corp. Participating companies

would add nutrients, such as iron, folic acid and vitamin A, to food

products they sell in poor countries and also provide governments and small

food producers with technical assistance for fortifying food staples, such

as rice, maize meal, wheat flour, oil, sugar, soy sauce and salt.

 

In exchange, the consortium, called the Global Alliance for Improved

Nutrition, or GAIN, would offer companies assistance in lobbying for

favorable tariffs and tax rates and speedier regulatory review of new

products in targeted countries. The consortium also would give local

governments money for initiatives to help create demand for fortified foods,

including large-scale public relations campaigns or a governmental " seal of

approval. "

 

The effort, whose total funding is $70 million over five years, is set to be

launched officially Thursday by Mr. Gates at the United Nations General

Assembly Special Session on Children. The consortium includes U.N. agencies

such as the World Bank, the World Health Organization and Unicef, the

governments of the U.S., Japan, Germany and Canada, and global health and

nutrition experts. Negotiations with some countries have already begun. The

presidents of Sri Lanka and Zambia are expected to be at the announcement

and are considering expanding current food-fortification programs under the

new effort.

 

Some experts are troubled by the idea of Bill Gates and multinational food

companies teaming up to reach into underdeveloped countries' food systems.

Critics dislike helping corporations peddle processed foods that, despite

added nutrients, still aren't especially healthy because of their fat, sugar

or sodium content. Many see the GAIN program as just a heavy-handed way to

ease corporate access to poor markets -- and one that won't do much to

counter malnutrition, to boot.

 

" This is a reductionist, single-nutrient techno-fix to a problem that is

much more complex, " says Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition and food

studies at New York University, who is the author of " Food Politics: How the

Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health. " " The main reason for the

lack of decent nutritional status is poverty, " she says. " Nobody's looking

at ways to get people jobs or health care. Maybe that's too hard -- even for

Bill Gates. " Wouldn't it be better, she asks, to teach people to grow fruits

and vegetables in adverse conditions?

 

" It's a good idea, but a lot of people will die from malnutrition before we

eliminate poverty, " replies Sally Stansfield, a Gates foundation official

working on the GAIN project. " We are trying to maximize the health,

cognitive power and productivity of people living right now. "

 

Andrew Natsios, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International

Development, which represents the U.S. in the consortium, dismisses doubts

about working with big companies and processed foods. Critics " may make

comments about the multinationals, " he says, " but that's how people eat. " He

says the program intentionally involves fortifying both processed foods and

staples in order to reach people of all income levels. " The only way this

kind of effort works on a mass scale is by layering, " Mr. Natsios says.

 

Horst Kramer, spokesman for Swiss drug company Roche, says even though

Roche, as part of the program, might sell its vitamin-and-mineral " premix "

packet, which users are supposed to add to flour or rice, the GAIN effort's

overarching goal is to provide nutritional assistance to the poor. Indeed,

he notes that GAIN will provide cash to governments and nonprofits that

apply for it. " This is not a marketing tool, " he says. " It's a philanthropic

effort. "

 

The folks at Kraft Foods see the project in a more pragmatic light. " We

think this partnership can accelerate the process of bringing fortified

products to market and build an accurate consumer awareness of the role

these products can play in improving nutrition, " says Stuart Wilson,

director, strategic growth initiatives, for Kraft Foods International.

 

" Participating in GAIN complements our own focus on health and wellness as a

key growth platform, " says Roger Deromedi, co-chief executive of Kraft Foods

and the chief of Kraft Foods International.

 

The GAIN project is modeled after the billion-dollar global vaccine program

to inoculate poor children, also backed by the Gates foundation. The guiding

principle is to bring public agencies and private industry together to

address grossly inadequate basic health care for the poor resulting from

failures of the marketplace. The foundation's approach is to fix problems

using market mechanisms. " We're interested in any health intervention that

can impact millions of lives, especially when the intervention is incredibly

inexpensive, " Mr. Gates says, in an interview. " Micronutrients fits that in

a big way. "

 

Details of the new program are still being worked out. But Kraft,

majority-owned by Philip Morris Cos., says some of its biscuits, cheeses and

beverages are already being fortified with nutrients and would make possible

candidates for the GAIN project. For example, Cheez Whiz and Kraft Singles

cheese slices are fortified with calcium, and Kool-Aid and Tang are

fortified with vitamins A and C, Kraft says. It currently sells fortified

Trakinas fruit-filled sandwich cookies in Brazil, fortified Pacific cookies

in China and fortified O'Smile cookies in Taiwan.

 

Meanwhile, in Venezuela, Procter & Gamble is test-marketing a new powdered

beverage mix called NutriStar, which contains iron, Vitamin A and iodine.

Heinz sells fortified ketchup in the Philippines.

 

GAIN's goal is to work with individual governments to assess nutritional

deficits and then, if appropriate, to help manufacturers bring fortified

foods to easy-to-reach urban populations there, says the Gates foundation's

Dr. Stansfield, who also works on the foundation's Infectious Disease and

Vaccine global health program. At the same time, the program will try to

reach desperately malnourished families in rural areas by supporting local

millers, nonprofit food programs and even households: Mothers could add free

or discounted packets of nutrients to their children's food.

 

DEFICIENT DIETS

 

Facts about vitamin and micronutrient deficiencies in developing

countries:

 

. Two billion people suffer from anemia (mostly iron deficiency

anemia)

. One-fifth of maternal deaths are due to severe anemia

. An estimated 200 million children do not get enough vitamin A from

their daily diet

. Without supplemental vitamin A, 250,000 would go blind each year

. Close to two billion people do not get enough iodine from their

daily diet

. Iodine deficiency is the leading cause of preventable mental

retardation in the world

 

Source: GAIN, USAID

 

Fortified foods, of course, aren't new. Iodine added to table salt has

improved health world-wide by reducing occurrences of goiter, neck swelling,

mental retardation and growth abnormalities. In the industrialized world,

fortification is so ubiquitous it goes largely unnoticed: Milk is fortified

with vitamin D, and every box of corn flakes has a list of added

micronutrients in bold-face type. Still, GAIN's approach -- pulling together

governments, the private sector and small nonprofits -- is unusual for its

scope, makeup and funding.

 

GAIN officials say they hope to encourage national governments to provide

regulatory concessions for fortified foods, thereby reducing the costs for

industry. They also hope for better policing of nutrition claims. Kraft's

Mr. Wilson says regulators often can't evaluate new products scientifically.

" GAIN can help facilitate these approval processes with appropriate guidance

from scientific authorities and public health experts, " he says.

 

Indeed, inconsistent regulatory standards is " one of the key barriers to the

private sector jumping into product fortification at the present time, " says

Keith Zook, a spokesman for Procter & Gamble's corporate sustainable

development division.

 

Nevertheless, GAIN remains a tough sell. The Gates foundation's Dr.

Stansfield says some European governments view such fortification programs

as one step away from genetically modified food and oppose them. Some

potential donors in Europe have been reluctant to meddle in the politics of

food distribution in poor countries -- even though GAIN, she says, for just

pennies could help children in northern Zaire with brain damage resulting

from iron deficiencies. A single added nutrient could help two billion

people world-wide with iron deficiencies or more than 800,000 world-wide

with vitamin A deficiencies, which can cause blindness.

 

See also:

 

Gates unveils $US70 million nutrition plan at UN summit

http://biz./prnews/020509/neth021_1.html

 

Gates Foundation Urged to Keep Philip Morris Out of Gates/UN Initiative to

Boost Nutrition in Global South

http://www.stuff.co.nz/inl/index/0,1008,1197373a12,FF.html