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1 out of 3 babies in Indonesia suffer from iron deficiency.
This issue is caused by lateness of switching to weaning food and difficulty accessing iron-rich foods for babies. Due to this, parents tend to use rice porridge as their preferred home made weaning food, which lacks nutrients and iron needed for optimal growth. Could Cerelac, a baby cereal fortified with iron, build relevancy and consideration by raising awareness of Iron Deficiency in general?
As a brand specifically made for the weaning period (transitioning children to solid food), Cerelac is lacking in relevance amongst Indonesian parents who prefer simple rice porridge as their baby’s weaning food.
As a product fortified with Iron nutrients, Cerelac was seeking new ways to increase relevance and consideration with the target audience by tackling one of Indonesia's biggest problem amongst babies: Iron Deficiency. This is one of the causal factors for stunting in Indonesian children, which stood at 21% in 2022, with the government actively attempting to reduce this rate to 14% by 2024
Although preventing iron deficiency can be easily done by consuming iron-rich foods, detecting the signs of iron deficiency itself is challenging.
However, there is one early sign of iron deficiency that is easily visible to the naked eye: the tongue color. A healthy tongue is a pinkish color, but a much paler or darker tone can indicate a health problem, like iron deficiency.
The Tongue Spoon, a baby spoon in the color of healthy baby’s tongue. Using a database of images of healthy baby tongues and tongues of babies with iron deficiency, we were able to determine the healthy tongue color. Leveraging feeding moments of Moms and babies, the Tongue Spoon help Moms identifying the first signs of potential iron deficiency by comparing their baby’s tongue color with the spoon. If the color of the spoon is similar with the tongue, all good. But if it's very different, it can mean that there is a health problem, such as iron deficiency.
The Tongue Spoon is available for free with every purchase of Cerelac, available in online and offline retailers throughout Indonesia.
To raise further awareness we collaborated with 500 health centers across Indonesia where Tongue Spoon was used as an educational tool.
By making the Tongue Spoon available for everyone it's instrumental in baby nutritional education in 500 National Health Posts, we educated over 15,000 Indonesian moms across rural areas to be aware of Iron deficiency and encourage them to choose weaning foods high in Iron. All using the simple method of tongue checking. This has led to 76% of moms introduced to the Tongue Spoon wanting to continue using the spoon and turn health and iron check-ups into a daily routine.Furthermore, 87% of moms educated by the Spoon now understand the importance of adding iron to babies weaning diet.
Due to the initial success, the next batch of 30.000 spoons is in the process of distribution, with the final aim to have the spoons available across Indonesia.
