Eleanor Crook Foundation

Ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF) is a peanut-based medical food that saves children’s lives.

For a child with severe malnutrition who can’t eat regular food, RUTF delivers the nutrients needed to recover - bringing them back from the brink of death in just weeks.

A low-cost, high-impact solution proven to work.

#RUTF #Malnutrition

On World Food Day, we’re thinking about this statistic: every 11 seconds, malnutrition claims a child’s life. It’s the leading cause of death for children under five, and many who survive face developmental challenges that limit their further potential for life.

The Eleanor Crook Foundation was founded in 1997 by Eleanor Butt Crook, grandmother of our CEO, Will Moore, after she spent years helping fight the Ethiopian famines of the 1970s and 1980s. Nearly 30 years later, the mission hasn’t changed, and neither has our conviction that this is a problem we can solve.

The treatment already exists. Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) can cure severe malnutrition in about six weeks. A full course of three packets a day costs less than $45 per child.

The challenge is making sure the funding is there to reach every child who needs it. So we’ve spent years connecting on-the-ground clinics with lawmakers, supporting more than 200 Members of Congress and senior staff on bipartisan learning trips to see RUTF work firsthand in places like Nepal, Kenya, and Madagascar.

That work helped lead to the first-ever $300 million direct investment in RUTF in the 2026 appropriations bill.

This World Food Day, we’re grateful to everyone working to make sure every child can get this life-saving treatment.

Congratulations to @LukeJLindberg, the new Executive Director of @WFP.

ECF CEO Will Moore: "With 343M people facing acute food insecurity, WFP needs a leader whose operational experience and strategic vision match the scale of this crisis."

#EndMalnutrition #Nutrition #GlobalHealth #FoodSecurity

No child should die of starvation. That's the goal we share with @OES_org — overhauling how the world funds and delivers RUTF, the peanut paste that saves severely malnourished kids.

Thanks @elissamio + @devex for covering its rise. devex.com/news/the-super…

The @StateDept just announced a historic $100M investment in Operation End Starvation to rapidly scale the world's most effective treatment for child malnutrition.

Every 30 seconds, a child dies from severe malnutrition—even though a low-cost, proven solution already exists.

This public-private partnership brings government, philanthropy, and manufacturers together around a single platform designed to fund and deliver lifesaving treatment at an unprecedented scale.

Thank you to the U.S. State Department, @SecRubio , and the bipartisan coalition in Congress for making this possible, as well as to the philanthropists who stepped up with an initial $33M.

We can achieve a world where children no longer die of starvation. This is just the beginning.

Learn more: operationendstarvation.org