WISHH News

Soy Snack Noodles are Success with Indonesian School Children

Is there such a thing as a healthy snack that 97 percent of children like to eat? In Indonesia there is. That snack is a wheat noodle enriched with soy flour from the United States. Since August of last year, more than 75,000 school children have received a total of 16 million packages of the protein-rich snacks through International Relief and Development's (IRD) innovative program combining soy and wheat flours provided through U.S. Department of Agriculture food assistance programs.

The World Initiative for Soy in Human Health (WISHH) and American Soybean Association (ASA) worked with IRD on the project, which has used approximately 2,731 metric tons of U.S. soy flour since March 2002 and will use another 193 metric tons by September 2003. ASA's Singapore staff helped develop the formulation for the soy-and-wheat noodles at the U.S. Wheat Associates Regional Noodle Training Center in Singapore. The project is now expanding to soy-rice foods thanks to Cargill's donation of 39 metric tons of soy flour for a pilot project to develop and distribute soy-enriched rice noodles that can help feed 500,000 Indonesians.

"Adding 20 percent soy flour (to wheat flour) increases the protein content from 10 percent to almost 17 percent," says IRD's Country Director David Prettyman. "In a country like Indonesia, where protein-energy malnutrition is estimated to be more than 25 percent, that is very important. " 

"Projects like this show that WISHH is helping foster new opportunities for value-added U.S. soy products in new markets around the world," said WISHH Program Director Jim Hershey.

IRD's Student Health Improvement Program (SHIP) had monitoring teams make sure the food was well received. Their research found 97 percent of the children liked the noodles that they were eating every day. The children wanted some variety in their meals so IRD is now planning to alternate the snack noodles with a soy-enriched biscuit.

In addition to the nutritional benefits, this project has helped reinvigorate the Indonesian food processing industry. Using soy-enriched wheat flour, four factories have sold 563 million packages of the noodles weighing nearly 20,000 metric tons. Furthermore, each of the factories plans to introduce their own brand of soy-enriched soy noodles in July 2003. "Over four years, IRD has assisted 12 factories, and as result, created more than 2000 jobs," Prettyman said.

Such successes will soon be repeated elsewhere in Asia if IRD has its way. Prettyman just returned from meetings with the U.S. Department of Agriculture regarding similar programs in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. IRD staff is going to Sri Lanka in July to explore the potential there too. This kind of interest is exactly what (insert state) soybean growers had hoped for when they helped launch WISHH in 2000 along with ASA and the United Soybean Board. The effort is helping America's soybean growers build more bridges between America's bounty and sustainable nutrition programs in countries where rapidly growing populations of all income levels can benefit from soy in their diets.

For more information, contact:

Karen Edwards, WISHH Consultant, 703/281-7600, karen@kcegroup.com