Measuring bio-available nutrients: results from “Catalyzing a Nutrient Economy” Event

What are the innovative interventions that can be implemented to improve nutrition in mothers, babies, school children, and our workforce?

Ashoka, GAIN, and BoPInc posed this question at the event “Catalyzing a Nutrient Economy” in Amsterdam, Netherlands April 19^th 2013.

A diverse group of stakeholders (listed below) including representatives from government, NGOs, and innovators on the ground, including Ashoka Fellows, discussed how the Nutrients for All framework unlocks opportunities for vitality in the landscapes, food, and people.

This framework enables us to talk about the importance of the right nutrients, bio-available nutrients, flowing from the environment to land to food and to people, and the powerful impact that measuring nutrients can have for strengthening nutrient value chains.

This event helped us to establish some of the basic tools for building this framework. Professor Buddy Ratner presented a low-cost tool to measure nutrient content, saying “we can set up a model for what a fully nutritious food or person looks like” to determine what nutrients are missing.

This type of measurement is key for practitioners like Ashoka Fellow Basil Kransdorff, who is looking for ways to measure how his bio-available food, ePap, impacts malnourished people: “The issue is what gets biologically absorbed at a cellular level to make the body work better and more efficiently.”

Following this discussion, we will continue to discuss these key questions:

• What does our nutrition indicator include?
• How can we use nutrition data to generate demand for nutrition—information, nutritious foods, and systems that support nutrition— for consumers and policy makers?
• How can we make complex nutrition data and information accessible to consumers and policy makers?
• How can we bring nutrition information to those at the Bottom of the Pyramid, who are often left out of marketing and communication campaigns?

Want to get engaged? Click here! 

Co-organizer Marti van Liere of GAIN presents on why focusing on nutrition in the first 1000 Days is so important.