Say “home cooking,” and many families around the world will show you the same tool: the trusty pressure cooker. Sturdy, reliable, and energy-efficient, it makes short work of rice, cooks veggies in minutes, and turns even tough cuts of meat into tender bites. Because it cooks food fast—and with less fuel than an oven—a pressure cooker is also good at preserving both nutrition and resources. That’s a big deal in low-resource settings, where every bite counts.
Now, PATH’s nutrition experts, along with partners, are exploring whether this humble tool can do something even more important: help stop the iron deficiency that causes energy-draining, life-threatening anemia for thousands of people worldwide.
Fishing for iron
“The project actually started with another great idea,” notes Megan Parker, senior nutrition researcher at PATH. “A few years ago, a Canadian graduate student invented something called the Lucky Iron Fish™ to help fight iron-deficiency anemia (IDA).”
Small enough to fit in a palm, the fish-shaped ingot, made of iron, is designed to be placed into a family cooking pot along with a stew, lentils, rice, or broth. Jogged by food acids, it releases needed iron into each meal.
“It was time,” adds Ruchika Sachdeva, Nutrition project team leader with PATH’s India country program. “The world needs solutions to IDA. It’s too common, causes fatigue, dizziness, headaches, and shortness of breath, and contributes to chronic infections. It’s also dangerous for pregnant women, dramatically raising their risk of uncontrollable bleeding during childbirth. And it can hinder children’s brain development—costing them throughout their lives.”
“PATH’s nutrition team saw the fish in action, and we loved it,” says Megan. “Yet among other challenges, we knew that families sometimes forgot to add it to the pot. We thought—what if we could build on this innovation and attach a source of iron directly to the inside of a pot?”
Adds Ruchika, “User studies in India told us that families prefer to use fuel-efficient cooking devices to save money and time. The pressure cooker fit the job.”
Bedazzled pots
Encouraged, the team started with basic research on how much iron an “enhanced” pot would need to release, what type of iron might work, and more. They also partnered with the India-based company TTK Prestige, one of the most popular and well-respected pressure cooker manufacturers in the world, to develop a consumer-friendly design.
The first prototypes added iron bolts to existing models. “And they were less than appealing,” notes Megan with a laugh. “Depending on how you look at it, they were either ‘bedazzled’ or something akin to an armored jacket.”