If you could cure starvation would you?

Would you get rid of famine, and the sad eyes of kids with bloated bellies if you could?

A Chilliwack resident says you can.

Ernie Charlton is helping lead the way in producing a food product that claims to be able to rid starvation from young children in third world countries.

Cibo, he says, is the cure.

"Children are dying from malnutrition every day," he says. "This product has everything a child requires nutrition and calorie wise for their diet."

And it's only 50 cents a pouch to make.

Last Thursday – on World Food Day – Charlton and his partners unveiled Cibo for the first time at Trinity Western University in Langley.

Cibo, meaning 'food' in Italian, is a quick-fix, ready-to-eat, therapeutic food for toddlers, that is similar in taste to peanut butter cookie dough, but packs a highly nutritional punch.

The high protein, high energy, sweet paste consists of peanut paste, oil, sugar, powdered milk, and is loaded with 22 vitamins and minerals. In just one 92-gram pouch is a whopping 500 calories – half the recommended calorie intake for a toddler.

Two pouches a day is enough to sustain a child in time of famine, says Charlton. Three pouches will put weight on a child.

Cibo is not new, though. In fact, the only thing new about it is the name.

When Charlton's employer, Mary Martini of Starline Windows in Langley, saw a 60 Minutes newscast about a product – called Plumpy'nut – that Doctors Without Borders was using to treat severely malnourished children in third world countries, she was blown away.

In the newscast, Martini heard statistics that have been said over and over again in a variety of commercials and infomercials:

A child dies of malnutrition every six seconds.

Five million children die every year from malnutrition.

Twenty million children are currently suffering from the most severe form of food deprivation.

But the thing that struck Martini in this particular newscast was that Doctors Without Borders was touting an actual cure, a product that "in three weeks can cure a kid that is looking half dead," a product that is the equivalent to a glass of milk and a multivitamin, a product that is so easy to use, all a child has to do is tear the package open and suck out the paste.

Plumpy'nut was that product.

Plumpy'nut was first formulated in 1999 by a French nutritionist, and manufactured by Nutriset, a company, dedicated to humanitarian relief. And in order to serve the widespread need, Nutriset waived the patent on Plumpy'nut, allowing any not-for-profit, aid organization to get on board and produce a Plumpy'nut of their own – as long as it was not put up for sale.

Martini wanted to get on board, she wanted to help, she wanted to manufacture her own version of Plumpy'nut, she just didn't know how to get it started.

Charlton did.

Charlton and his family have been extending their hands in a variety of humanitarian efforts for years. They've sponsored children in Africa and Haiti; have worked in an orphanage in Uganda; drilled fresh water wells in Cambodia. They have contacts.

When Martini approached Charlton about her desires, he didn't hesitate. He loved the idea of getting in on an aid project that would be locally developed from the ground up. And more importantly he loved that he would be helping young children who desperately need adequate nutrition to develop physically and mentally in the first years of their lives.

"If you miss that window, they will have a deficiency in some area of their lives for their rest of their lives," says Charlton.

The first batch of Cibo, some of which was mixed in Chilliwack at Norma's Bakery on 4th Avenue, is being sent to South Sudan, North Korea and Paraguay through Langley-based relief organization, Global Aid Network.

Charlton hopes to spread it even further around.

"Pretty much every continent has a need," he says. "This product is designed to meet those nutritional needs for very young children ... all we want to do is get it into the mouths of the children who most need it."

Anyone interested in more information, or donating to the cause can visit the website www.foodforfamine.org.

kbartel@theprogress.com