ALC : Alfalfa Leaf Concentrate

28 May 2004 Sister Luci Morren, a nun from Louvain in Belgium, graduated in family economics and nutrition. She devotes her life to the development of the poorest people in Central America, particularly in Nicaragua, through the SOYNICA association. Her revolt against poverty has prompted this cry from the heart.

For several years now, we have been working with women to prevent malnutrition and anaemia, which affect populations that lack nutritional knowledge, are economically poor and suffer from chronic malnutrition from generation to generation.

We have spent years studying all the ancient food traditions and solutions, both old and new, that already exist. In general, populations have a rich culture when it comes to food, even if, as a result of their history, some have become impoverished in terms of good eating habits, losing their link with nature, which provides human beings with everything they need to live and be healthy.

We then made an inventory of the other existing solutions, trying to understand the habits and integrating their food logic so that, if necessary, we could intervene and correct any errors.

Customs and consumer habits are part of our heritage, and when people want to do something about food, they have to reinforce what’s good, correct what’s wrong, innovate and help people discover what’s not so well known, again and again.

In Guatemala, for example, a company has launched ‘Incaparina’, a cereal supplemented with proteins from cottonseed, and ‘Protemas’, based on crushed soya. The results have been good. But crushed soya is too expensive for low-income families.

In Mexico, on the other hand, people have learnt to cook soya beans, which are much more advantageous than crushed soya because they are cheaper and easy for families in rural areas to grow.

I also worked in Guatemalan refugee camps in the Chiapas region of Mexico. Soya beans and crushed soya helped them a lot. The children and young women quickly recovered their health. When I arrived in Nicaragua in 1979, I introduced the traditional technique of preparing soya beans. We introduced soya cultivation in the fields, which was not the tradition.

Over the years, thousands of children have stayed alive thanks to what their mothers have learnt about nutrition, enriching the family diet with plants that have fallen into disuse or ancient foods and getting used to cooking soya beans.

Thousands of children are now less malnourished thanks to the presence of soya beans in their diet, and thousands of families are finding the beginnings of a remedy for their poverty despite the lack of variety in their diet. No one doubts the benefits of soya any more.

Then, one day, we discovered the principle of foliar extraction. A complete departure from previous alternatives!

It was the start of a new era in SOYNICA’s nutritional approach and work. Not behind the desk, but in the field.

In 1989, the English association LEAF FOR LIFE arrived in Nicaragua with the aim of teaching traditional techniques for extracting nutritional elements from the leaves of green plants. SOYNICA’s promoters learnt about the leaf concentrateion process and immediately added it to their training workshops on the home-made technique for preparing soya beans.

In this way, they were able to teach the local population how to extract the richest substances contained in the green leaves of local plants. But the extracts made by hand from the leaves were too moist to keep well. Their consumption did not achieve the desired results.

SOYNICA then built a craft workshop equipped with a mechanical macerator to increase the grinding of the leaves of the vigna unguiculata shrubs. Between 20 and 30 kg of wet concentrate was obtained every day. This concentrate was dried in solar ovens during the summer. We then had 5 to 8 kg of dry leaf concentrates, which were more concentrated in nutrients than the wet form. Consumption tripled. Mothers and SOYNICA staff quickly observed very positive changes in malnourished consumers suffering from anaemia. No-one had ever seen such a rapid recovery. With soya and a good diet, it would have taken months and months to achieve the same result.

We approached officials and doctors. But most of them thought that the simple idea of consuming leaf concentrates (LC) was foolhardy or daring. SOYNICA was once again a voice in the wilderness! Just as had happened when soya beans were introduced into the diet during the previous decade.

In 1994, LEAF FOR LIFE and the Association pour la Promotion des Extraits Foliaires en Nutrition (APEF) met and joined forces. APEF sent highly concentrated dehydrated Alfalfa Leaf Concentrates (ALC) to SOYNICA for inclusion in family diets. A growing number of people would thus have access to this food supplement. At APEF’s request, we began an effectiveness test, monitored by a doctor, on 200 anaemic children and mothers from poor families.
Within three months, more than 85% of the supplemented individuals had reached normal haemoglobin levels (i.e. were not anaemic). SOYNICA then organised the distribution of LCs in community or pre-school education centres during the school year, with the aim of monitoring the increase in haemoglobin levels in 2,000 children aged between 3 and 6.

The analyses showed the same improvement. At the same time, we were able to observe better school results in these children and a reduction in absenteeism from school thanks to a reduction in the frequency and duration of childhood illnesses.

With LCs, SOYNICA now had the means to rapidly cure anaemia in malnourished children. However, as no doctor wanted to try it out on his patients, no medical authority dared to talk about it or testify to it. Fortunately, families in both rural and urban areas, who consumed foliar extracts and more specifically ALC, witnessed the results of this consumption.

People started talking about it. That their haemoglobin levels rose, that their skin problems improved, that sometimes their eyesight improved, that they recovered from coughs, headaches and insomnia, and that their illnesses, particularly respiratory ailments, became less serious and less frequent.

Mothers reported having a less tiring pregnancy, giving birth to bigger and taller babies and recovering more quickly after giving birth. Those who breastfed had more milk and the balance of the babies’ diet at weaning was assured, while the children grew and gained weight normally.

And by word of mouth, there were many other examples of improvements in the general condition of people suffering from all kinds of illnesses; some claimed that LCs also improved the condition of people suffering from influenza, tonsillitis, diabetes, arthritis, bronchitis, pneumonia, allergies, asthma and tuberculosis. There’s no doubt that the right nutritional balance restores the body’s immune system and resistance.

SOYNICA conducted a trial to distribute LCs to children with leukaemia undergoing chemotherapy at Managua Children’s Hospital. In agreement with the head of the department, this experiment has been continued. The leaf concentrates helped to boost the natural defences of the sick children, as well as their haemoglobin levels, appetite and resistance to infectious diseases. Thousands of poor, malnourished children with leukaemia undergoing treatment could also benefit from LC.

These testimonials are important, but I’ve always been afraid that people would see LCs as a medicine rather than a food supplement. For the vast majority of low-income families, especially those from rural or suburban areas, foliar extracts represent an easy and less expensive solution than resorting to medicine. But with LC = medicine, consumption stops as soon as they are cured.

As for me, what does my experience as a nutritionist suggest and dictate? Anaemia is a destroyer of life. It prevents the acquisition of knowledge, it prevents intellectual concentration, it prevents analysis and reasoning. Anaemia turns human beings into living corpses.

When SOYNICA measured the haemoglobin levels of children coming into its care, it found that between 40% and 60% were below the desirable target. Children who regularly consume LCs quickly reach the optimum haemoglobin level and then stay there. The macro and micro nutrients that were missing from their daily diet because of their poverty are provided to them daily in the 6 to 10 grams of the concentrate. They may be poor children, but they are intelligent children whose brains are not damaged by a poor and deficient diet. Hence our confirmation of the question asked by a Mexican visitor observing SOYNICA’s youngsters at school: ‘These are not poor children. No sir, they are not poor in health, energy, knowledge, joy or happiness. Their homes, clothes and shoes are poor, they have no money but they have all their mental capacities and are ready to face life. They are lively, well-rounded children who now have a wide range of opportunities for their future lives, including, in particular, the ability to assimilate all types of education and training. These children will not be the playthings of development or external aid: they will be the actors of their own development. Faced with the food deficit of the majority of Nicaraguan families, SOYNICA uses foliar concentrates as a tool against poverty. SOYNICA is building human capital, investing much of its energy in training human beings free from malnutrition and anaemia.

Thanks to the consumption of LC or ALC, many families from rural areas are able to break the barrier of hunger and inertia and escape the vicious circle of poverty. In particular, the savings on medicines and doctor’s visits enable these families to invest more in food, education and housing.

My question is this: what is happening to the thousands and thousands (not just a thousand) of malnourished and anaemic children in this country and in other countries around the world? Who cares that these thousands and thousands of children are growing up with destroyed brains, with lesions due to a lack of food, due to anaemia and due to the absence of the care they deserve?

This information is not relayed anywhere in the world, least of all within the global organisations that are responsible for paying attention to the food and health of populations and seeking solutions in regions affected by high levels of food insecurity. Nowhere is this a subject for an economist. Has anyone ever calculated the economic losses caused by malnutrition and anaemia? Have we ever calculated how much illness weighs on the budget of low-income families? How are farming families impoverished because their members suffer from illnesses such as asthma, respiratory ailments and diarrhoea? Is it common sense that chronic malnutrition, and in particular anaemia, reduces human faculties to the point of total inertia? How can we talk about ‘development’ when more than half the population is malnourished and anaemic, prevented from participating in the progress of society? Good nutrition in sufficient quantities is essential for human development and fulfilment.

SOYNICA’s policy is therefore to prevent malnutrition and anaemia. For us, this means starting with pregnant women, breast-feeding mothers, young children and all family members. The concept of leaf concentrates of alfalfa or other green plants MAKES A LOT OF THE DIFFERENCE between all the other existing solutions.

Sister Luci Morren : soynica@sdnnic.org.ni

 

N.B.: SOYNICA now has 15 years of expertise in the use of Leaf Concentrates:

• From 1989 to 2003 with the LCs of local green plants produced using the English ‘artisanal’ method.
• From 1994 to 2004 with ALCs produced in France.

APEF has been working with SOYNICA since 1994 to observe the effect of ALCs on a large population: 132 tonnes have been sent from France to date by APEF, representing more than 15 million doses/day.

The world’s plants constitute an enormous leaf mass of incomparable richness. Green leaves contain more nutrients than grains and roots, excluding energy.

They match the protein value of most animal products and even surpass them when it comes to vitamins and trace elements.

But the human digestive system is not adapted to eating leaves directly. It is incapable of absorbing and digesting a sufficient volume to balance its nutritional requirements.

This is why the APEF proposes :

• to extract the most nutritious components from the leaves: proteins, vitamins and trace elements, after removing the non-digestible fibrous part and a large part of the mineral load of the whole plant,
• then, in the form of a perfectly digestible dry concentrate, to supplement the basic rations of malnourished individuals. The production principle is simple: as soon as the plant is harvested, it is crushed and pressed, and the green juice obtained is heated to 90°. The heat causes the proteins to coagulate, taking with them the predominantly insoluble or fat-soluble substances, including vitamins, lipids and trace elements. The leaf concentrate (coagulum) is filtered, dried and bagged for later use as is or mixed with other foods. The fibrous residue is excellent for livestock feed. Its use by livestock is essential for the economic and financial balance of concentrate production.