Application of low-cost extrusion cooking to weaning foods in feeding programmes. Part 1.

Supplementary foods can be used as a direct means for providing malnourished population groups with the additional food they require. These foods may supply not only much needed food energy, but also substantial amounts of high quality protein, vitamins and minerals. One of the objections to supplementary feeding programmes in the past has been that they have often distributed imported foods and have done little to stimulate local food production. The low-cost extrusion cooker (LEC) programme to be described in this article has as its primary objective the low cost manufacture in developing countries of highly nutritious supplementary foods from locally-grown food crops.