Business with a heart is helping children at home and abroad

By Christy Nadalin
Posted 10/20/18

Navyn Salem, a Barrington resident and mother of four, is the driving force behind Edesia, the company she created to produce and deliver Plumpy’Nut, a peanut-based therapeutic food that …

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Business with a heart is helping children at home and abroad

Posted

Navyn Salem, a Barrington resident and mother of four, is the driving force behind Edesia, the company she created to produce and deliver Plumpy’Nut, a peanut-based therapeutic food that revitalizes starving children around the globe.

Over the years, Ms. Salem came to realize that Edesia could expand to create a new line of nutritional products to market in the United States, and channel the proceeds from these foods to help sustain and grow Edesia’s humanitarian efforts.

“At Edesia, we have been feeding a peanut nut butter blend called Plumpy’Nut to millions of malnourished babies over the last 10 years, so this was an area of expertise for us,” said Ms. Salem. “I have so many friends who have children with peanut allergies, and I have seen how tough it can be. I thought if we could make something that could help prevent peanut allergies in the future, then we should create something special for this purpose.”

At the same time, the American Academy of Pediatrics recently changed their guidelines about introducing peanut-containing foods to babies as a result of findings in a clinical trial called Learning Early About Peanut Allergy (LEAP). Scientists randomly divided a group of 600 infants considered to be at high risk of developing peanut allergy because they had severe eczema, egg allergy, or both, into two groups. One group was given peanut-containing foods to eat regularly, and the other group was told to avoid peanut-containing foods. They did this until they reached 5 years of age.

By comparing the two groups, researchers found that regular consumption of peanut-containing foods beginning early in life reduced the risk of developing peanut allergies by 81 percent.

But the solution isn’t as simple as giving babies peanuts or peanut butter. “We knew peanut butter was too sticky for babies and could be a choking hazard,” said Ms. Salem. Little Nut solves the texture problem by blending peanuts with coconuts and real fruit into three baby-friendly flavors: peanut apple cinnamon, peanut banana, and peanut berry.

It’s a logical next step for Ms. Salem, who has grown Edesia products from an idea to one of Rhode Island’s largest exports in under a decade.

Three generations of her family hail from Tanzania, an African nation with a relatively high rate of childhood malnutrition. With a background in business, Ms. Salem saw an opportunity to work toward a solution to a global health crisis, while at the same time attacking the unemployment that is at the root of poverty.

And there was a personal angle as well.

“My four daughters inspired me to want to take on this work, as our focus is on the most vulnerable women and children,” she said. So she partnered with Nutriset, a French company that developed the formula for Plumpy’Nut. She opened her Tanzania factory, Power Foods, in 2007, and not long after, it was turning out individual packets of Nutriset’s remarkable nutrition product and distributing it throughout the region.

Plumpy’Nut revolutionized the treatment of malnutrition because it requires no cooking, no refrigeration, is not dependent on a water supply, has a two-year shelf-life, and can be given to severely malnourished children for treatment at home. And it works.

“I knew there was demand for these scientifically proven nutrition solutions from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), but there were no U.S. suppliers to fill the needs,” she said. (Federal law requires USAID to use only U.S.-sourced products.) “This factor, as well as research and development opportunities, could be worked on more easily from Providence than Tanzania.”

So Ms. Salem opened another factory, here at home. Edesia was born in 2009, and in March 2010, the first pack of Plumpy’Nut came off the production line.

Ms. Salem is hoping that Little Nut can do for Americans what Plumpy’Nut has done for malnourished children around the world.

“Over the years, my own friends and family approached me with their own health challenges,” she said. “The list of problems to solve seemed endless and inspired me to start making foods like Little Nut for American families like yours and mine.”

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