With over 200 participants, the contest took place in the communities of Andahuaylas in Apurimac and Angaraes in Huancavelica to foster good eating habits and highlight the use of local foods in the struggle against chronic malnutrition
Testimonials | Nutrition Tips
Alarcón Laupa and Marta Mezares Huaman are not just good cooks. They are smart women. Their “Quinoa pasta with two-color sauce and roasted guinea pig”, the top award winner in the “Tasty Nutritious Food from my Town” contest, reveals their creativity and commitment to their cultural heritage. The dish is a tasty fusion of tastes and textures from traditional Andean cooking with a city touch. Their preparation met all the evaluation nutritional criteria set out for the contest, while making full use of fresh local produce, including vegetables and herbs, in addition to animal products from their own farms. Not by coincidence, the competition underscored the importance of tasty and nutritious food for mothers and children. Chronic malnutrition accounts partially for the high mortality and low learning abilities found among poor children. As a result, over the longer term, poverty is transmitted from one generation to the next. For the last three years, the World Bank has focused on making this issue more visible in Peru. “Part of what happens is that in the Andean mountains, for instance, there is a widespread perception that chubby children are in good health or that children from indigenous communities are just shorter. In fact, there is no scientific evidence to prove that. They are all malnourished, but neither their mothers nor the communities seem to realize this, and obviously society ignores the problem”, explains Omar Arias, the World Bank’s Sector Leader for Human Development in Andean countries. On the other hand, the World Bank provides technical assistance to the Peruvian conditional cash tranfer program JUNTSO. The objective is to identify its strenghts and the improvements required. JUNTOS reaches 638 districts in 14 regions in Peru. By August 2009 JUNTOS had 414 000 beneficiary. Gania and Marta are mothers from the Manzana Pata, community in Pacucha district of the Andahuaylas province in Apurimac. They had noticed their small children did not enjoy eating quinoa, a staple of their daily diet, so they started looking for a palatable preparation.  | Sonia Hurtado, ones of the finalists at the competition in Andahuaylas |
Quinoa is an original grain from the Andes and was a main staple in the ancient Inca diet. It grows above 3500 meters of altitude, with Peru and Bolivia as the two largest Latin American producing countries. Its high nutritional value (16.2% protein content compared to 7.5% for rice and 14% for wheat) make it an invaluable crop. It is also a major source of starch, sugar, fibers, minerals and vitamins. In their new version of the traditional quinoa dish, they added two sauces, a yellow squash sauce and a green and water crest one. Both were seasoned with basil, tomato paste, paprika and cumin. To make the dish even more nutritional, they serve it with fried guinea pig previously coated in a mix of corn flower and physalis nectar. "A nutritious preparation must include animal products or ingredients rich in iron and must be served with orange, red, yellow and dark green leafy vegetables and/or fruits. For instance, the wining dish, Quinoa pasta two-color sauce and roasted guinea pig, has an animal original product such as cuy, which contains ten times more iron than, for example, spinach. This is very important, specially for children who need iron in order to grow up and develop well and for pregnant women in order to have a healthy baby and avoid anemia", explained María Inés Sanchez Griñan, a nutritionist and head of CERES NUTRIR. With over 200 participants from Andahuaylas community in Apurímac and Angaraes in Huancavelica, the contest was organized jointly by JUNTOS, Peru’s National Program for Direct Support to Poor People, the Ministry of Health’s General Directorate for Health Promotion, the World Bank, the Peruvian Gastronomy Association (APEGA) and its members, the Huancavelica and Apurímac regional (state) governments and the provincial governments of Angaraes and Andahuaylas; with technical support from the CERES NUTRIR team.  | | Chef José Meza, teacher at Le Cordon Bleu and one of the judges in Andahuaylas |
The range of dishes submitted to the jury’s evaluation shows that training and sharing with homemakers new ways to cook food will help them significantly improve their families’ diets. Entries included peeled green haba lima beans in huacatay herb green sauce, guinea pig pot roast with vegetables, alfalfa and tumbo passionfruit sherbet, quinoa spicy stew and trout, chicken liver puree with potatoes, spicy quinoa stew with guinea pig, pureed squash with amaranth and liver with potatoes, trout and basul tree-bean sauté, wheat main dish, quinoa with guinea pig and tarwi Andean lupine, earthen stove pachamanca baked meats and vegetables and others.  | | Delia Juarez, member of the panel of judges in Andahuaylas |
Delia Juarez Castillo, a nutritionist from Apurimac’s Health Department and a jury member, said this was the first typical food contest having simultaneously addressed nutritional and human capital development issues. A good mother and child diet is key for development. It has been scientifically proven that 50% of the child’s future growth is decided during pregnancy. Pregnant mothers must be in top nutritional, psychological and physical health to deliver babies with full intellectual and learning potential. Children develop 35% of their brain capacity from birth until 3 years of age, simultaneously with other body organs. However, 21 of every 100 children born in Peru live in a state of chronic malnutrition. The consequential lower learning capacities prevent them from accomplishing their full intellectual and physical potential. A skilled labor force depends on sound nutrition, explained Omar Arias, the World Bank’s Sector Leader for Human Development in Andean countries. “If Peru wants to stay on the path to grow, it must not rely solely on mineral or asparagus exports. It has to shift to exporting higher value added products that require a more sophisticated labor force. A healthier population is also a more skilled population, with better professionals”. Milagro Núñez Rivera, Executive Director of the JUNTOS Poor People Support Program, said the “Tasty Nutritious Food from my Town” contest has been a powerful learning experience. “This has been the best lesson the Program has learned in its four years of existence. A new belief in the people and that capacity building is possible drawing on women’s knowledge and that we at JUNTOS, as an organization, will succeed only if we adapt, become more creative, place ourselves in poor people’s shoes, talk in a way they will understand us, focus on communication, and look beyond what we have already learned”. After accepting their awards and concluding an internship at the "Le Cordon Bleu" cooking school in Lima, the winners will go back to their home towns to share their wonderful recipes.
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Testimonials  | "The most important lesson that JUNTOS has learned from this contest is that no matter how vulnerable women are when they see an opportunity they are the first ones to take it. And the institutional lesson for us is that coordination among different organizations is a key issue that has to be improved, but keeping people in the center as human beings who hold opportunities" Milagro Nuñez, Executive Director, Programa Juntos |  | "We value our quinoa because in our town it is growth a lot. We also have eggs and cuy. We breed them by oruselves. We no longer spend much money because we can find eatsble vegetables in our land. all the ingredients we use for cooking can be found in our fields" Gania Alarcón, first prize winner presenting her recipe |  | "People think that somenthing that is nutrltious does not combine with something that is delicious. But if you know hot to prepare it and does it with love, the nutritious food can also be rich" Chef Marc Dallard, teacher at Le Cordon Bleu and one of the judges in Mistura |  | "With this gastronomic contest we intend to make visible fro our people all the nutritious potential our local products have and also show, something that is key for me, that the mothers and people share their culinary knowledge and wisdom" Victor Manuel Molina, Mayor of Andahuaylas |
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Nutritional tips  | What are the ingredients of a nutritious dish?
Animal products, like liver, blood, spleen, fish, ram, guinea pig, etc., served together with vegetables like squash, carrots, Swiss chards, atacco green leaf and yellow or orange fruits including mandarins, morello cherries, etc. Pregnant mothers must eat 4 full meals a day and children 5 times daily, including 3 main meals and 2 snacks. | | |  | How can I know if my child is growing up well?
Children’s size and weight control during their first 5 yeas allows monitoring the correct children development. determining. A new born is on average 50 cm and weighs between 3 and 3.5 kilos. A new baby should grow 24 cm and triple body weight in his/her first year of life approximately. By age 2, the baby should have grown an additional 12 cm approximately. | | | 
| What products found in Apurímac and Huancavelica are nutritious?
Apurimac grows quinoa, one of the most complex and balanced foods worldwide. This grain has more protein than any other cereal. Apurimac also grows potato, corn, fava beans, wheat, barley and tarwi. Domestic animals include hens, guinea pig, chickens, ducks, etc. The “Tasty Nutritious Food from my Town” contest also has brought attention to the use of ‘chochoca’, a cooked corn flower with a spectacular taste used as a sauce thickener and texturizer. Another highlight of the contest was “basul”, a legume whose seeds are eaten boiled or roasted, and can be used to prepare a type of flower with important nutritional value. Finally, native potatoes have outstanding protein value and extremely high antioxidant content. Huancavelica grows corn, peas, alfalfa, beans, potatoes, barley, wheat, feed oats and legumes, mainly. The Ministry of Economy and Finance’s poverty map includes Achonga in this region (state). Achonga is Peru’s poorest district. In these Andean communities, child malnutrition is pervasive. Child shepherds eat only twice a day when tending their herds. Some boiled potatoes or dried potatoes (chuño in Quechua) for breakfast and occasionally a wheat flower custard, and for supper a coarsely ground barley soup with fat but no vegetables. Almost unfailingly, this diet leads to chronic child malnutrition. | | | 
| How should we handle the food when preparing our meals?
Handwashing with soap and clean water before cooking is indispensable in order to avoid illnesses. Food ingredients should also be washed as well as the cooking utensils, all of which should be kept covered befores their use. |
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