12 August 2008

Clever Foods ~ Micronutrients, Macro-Impact

I was hanging earlier with my entrepreneur friend Manish Bhardwaj, co-founder of MIT spinoff Innovators-in-Health, when he mentioned Copenhagen Consensus founder Bjorn Lomborg's Global Priorities. Specifically Manish spotlighted the disproportionate potential of micronutrients, those "dietary minerals needed by the human body in very small quantities". I'd known this, of course, in the abstract, but Manish pointed out how enormous the numbers are for iron-deficiency anemia -- and the disastrous consequences of this easily-remedied ailment. This is what kills me: we know today how to deal with this issue; it is quite literally "easily remedied" -- micronutrients have macro-impact. Like Plumpy'nut. Well, Lomborg, et al, know this too, and strongly recommend prioritization. My bias, naturally, is that Developmental Entrepreneurship solutions are called for!

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