"Go to malnutrition especially not eat too fast '

"It is natural: you see food and you want to eat," says former nutrition professor Jo Hautvast in the NOS Radio 1 Journal. "But the experiences that many fast food can end quite dramatically if you are severely malnourished."

"It should be slow," he explains. "Give this severely malnourished people food, then chances are that they still die within a few days or weeks. The lack of food are their stomach and intestinal grown so thin, that there may be gaps."

So it went wrong with concentration camp residents at the end of World War II. "Those people were liberated and got to eat again. Within a few weeks they died because they could not just have it."

Proper care

During the famine in Ethiopia mid eighties, researchers developed a special feed mixture to let people quickly recuperate. "It was kind of drink powdered milk, oil, sugar with all kinds of vitamins and minerals. There you can every hour a bit of food," says Hautvast.
He hopes that sufficient medical staff in Madaya and elsewhere in order to provide proper care. "It is a very difficult task. I hope they do not just deliver the food, but also get their hands on the most vulnerable people." According to Red Cross spokesman Juriaan Lahr that responsibility lies with the local health authorities.

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