Malnutrition during the early years of a child's life mark their physical and emotional development forever. Coming up with an idea to expose malnutrition cases in order to combat it, can improve their lifes for good.

In Mexico, not all the kids have a good access to medical services.

On average, social health professionals just arrive once or twice per year to schools in remoted areas. This situation complicates Kellogg´s efforts to identify malnutrition cases and to tackle them with more effective nutrition programs.

We found a reliable way to identify this problem in kids under six years old: upper arm diameter measurement.

Losing muscular tissue is a clear symptom of malnutrition, and the arm is the part of the body where we can see this lost clearly. That´s why upper arm diameter measurement is more adequate to identify malnutrition than the weight or height of the kid, and it is a common technique used by doctors and nutritionists. An arm with 12.5cm in diameter is a sign of malnutrition.

Through this technique, we created school uniforms capable of displaying malnutrition alerts in real-time. By placing this measuring system on the sleeves of kids’ clothing, and simply adjusting them to their arms, we kept track of their nutritional status daily.

With the help of industrial designers, doctors and nutritionists, we integrated the special meter in uniforms in a very simple and effective way.

Once kids had their uniforms on, parents and teachers just had to close the part that remained exposed in their right arm with a Velcro system. An arrow on one side of the sleeve pointed to three colors (green, yellow, or red) related to three possible nutrition states, depending on the arm's diameter. This simple indicator ensured parents and teachers had constant information both, at home and at school, about the nutritional status of their children.

If the color was green, the child was in a good condition; if it was yellow or red, it meant the child was in a moderate or severe malnutrition situation. In the case of a yellow or red indicator, a nutritional expert’s number could be found on the shirt's label for immediate help.

In less than two weeks, we went to 20 public schools at 4 of the most needed locations in Mexico to provide them with the uniforms.

During this period, thousands of children wore our uniforms. We have already received more than 200 hundred telephone calls that have become the first step to solve the children’s malnutrition problem in Mexico, allowing us to grow our database in these locations and letting us offer more personalized and effective nutrition programs.

Brand perception improved among parents of the places in which we implemented our initiative, as their knowledge about nutrition issues became wider.

Due to the success of this initiative, Uniform Against Malnutrition are expected to reach more than 200 public schools in the most remoted areas of the country by the end of the year, as well as thousands of Mexican kids in high risk of malnutrition.

In Mexico, 1 out of every 8 children under the age of five suffer from malnutrition. The problem often remains invisible and this makes it hard to battle against it. Malnourished children may seem healthy, and so, it’s hard to address the illness with proper treatment or better nutrition programs.

You can’t fight a problem you can’t see. As children nutrition experts, Kellogg’s knew it was necessary to develop a social campaign to expose malnutrition cases in order to make the brand’s food programs more effective and relevant for kids in high risk. This was also a measure to address parents starting to stray away from the brand.