Stunting in Laos: A Key Summary
- Laos has the highest stunting rate in South East Asia, affecting about one-third of all children
- Laotian children’s diets lack diversity, relying heavily on rice while consuming minimal protein, vegetables, and fruits.
- Amazake, a Japanese fermented rice drink, is proposed as a low-cost method to improve nutrition
- Locally produced amazake could cost less than US$1 per day, making it an affordable and scalable nutritional intervention.
- Experts believe amazake could significantly reduce stunting, if integrated into daily diets through drinking or cooking.
Stunting is defined by UNICEF as ‘the failure to grow both physically and cognitively and is the result of chronic or recurrent malnutrition.”
Laos has one of the highest prevalences of stunting in the world, seen in children five years of age and below – according to data from the World Bank, the percentage of this stood at 32.8% as of 2023.
It tops the list within the South East Asian region, far beyond first runner-up Myanmar which has a prevalence of 26.7%.
“Laos has a very high rate of malnutrition, which has resulted in many of our children suffering from stunting, which has many lifelong effects on their personal and professional lives,” ASEAN Sub-Committee for Food Science and Technology (SCFST) Chair Dr Sayvisene Boulom told the floor at the recent Fi Asia 2025 show in Bangkok. Thailand.
“This is exceptionally prevalent in poor and mountainous areas, so we have been focusing a lot of our studies on children from these areas in order to find ways to improve their diets and lifestyles so as to reduce malnutrition and stunting.”
According to his research, Laotian children eat rice on a daily basis as a staple but far less protein sources like meat and eggs.
There is also a severe lack of diversity in their diets where items like beans, vegetables and fruits are not common – but instead junk food, candy and sweet drinks are a very predominant feature.
“This is because these unhealthy foods are very abundantly available and cheap, and parents here generally have no knowledge about nutrition or what is proper food,” he added.
“As such, since children are already eating rice daily anyway, we believe that fortified rice is the best option to help them improve their nutrition.”
Various fortification projects have been attempted before in the country, but none have reached a nationwide scale due to cost concerns.
“We need to enrich the rice with nutrients like protein, vitamins and minerals, but so far doing this on a mass scale is difficult as the process can be expensive,” he said.
“Researchers now believe that amazake, a traditional Japanese fermented rice product, could be the answer for Laos as it is high in vitamin B, oligosaccharides, kojic acid, amino acids and fibre.”
From Japan to Laos
Amazake is a traditional non-alcoholic Japanese drink made from fermented rice, and Dr Boulom believes that drinking one serving of this or cooking it with rice can provide the nutrients required to turn things around.
“Even more importantly, amazake is an affordable option – when made and produced in Laos, it would cost less than US$1 a day to provide them with the nutrients they need,” he said.
“Laos has a very healthy supply of rice so this would not be an issue, and this also means that we no longer have to spend lots of money to buy fortified foods imported from overseas markets.”
