Importance of Animal Food SourcesIn third world countries, children are not being provided with the nutrients required forgrowth. Adolescents are developing micronutrient deficiencies from the food that is currentlyavailable. Kenya's food sources are mainly crops such as maize, millet, and beans. A largemajority of the young are deprived of meat and protein, however, some are fortunate enough tohave animal byproducts, mainly milk and eggs. From just these foods, protein-energymalnutrition is becoming an epidemic in places in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia.Animal source food must become more available to developing countries to help children get thenutritional supplements needed to prevent malnutrition.To help children combat this problem, a study in Kenya was conducted by randomlyselecting twelve schools and designating them to groups one through four. Each group was givena snack every school day. In each feeding they were supplied their local plant dish (githeri) andfat supplements, some had other supplements given as well. There was the control group thatwas not given any feedings, the plant based group that was only provided githeri and fatsupplements, the meat group which had finely ground beef added to their meals, and the milkgroup which was supplemented with ultra heat treated whole cow milk. Since the purpose of thisexperiment was to see the effects of animal source foods, each child in the experiment also hadtheir height, cognitive test score, and physical activity level measured prior to the study. Fromthis the results gathered proved their hypothesis correct, children given animal food sources didbetter on all measurements. However, while the milk group did show a greater increase in eacharea compared to the plant base and control group, the plant based group did do better on thearithmetic tests. Even though both the meat and milk groups showed improvements, the meatgroup increased the best overall in every category. From these findings it is clear that childrenmust be supplemented with animal source food to meet their protein and energy requirements.Since the experiment clearly proved that the main plant based diet causes a decrease ingrowth, activity, and cognition animal byproducts must be included in meals. To help aid in this,dietary changes must happen. A better effort to acquire animals for both food and byproductsneeds to be established. Farms have to change their operations to allow more farm animals to beadded and plant more protein based plants instead of cash crops. People must also becomeeducated in food preparation and storage to improve diets. To be able to accomplish thesechanges departments, such as animal science, can provide help. For instance, by looking on theproduction side of animal science, a meat byproduct could be invented that is both cheap andeasily mass produced. This way developing countries would be more likely to buy and supplythese byproducts to schools for the kids. Animal science graduates can also provide theeducational needs. By teaching families how important animal food sources are, as well as howto cook and preserve food, people will have the knowledge of how to be healthier. Graduates canalso donate their time and help with the technical side of animal production. On the science sideof animal science breeding can be used to acquire animal food sources. Creating a way toincrease the percentage of fat and lean in animals that are under poorer conditions can allow thefamilies to provide more meat based products. A follow up idea to this would be to discover away to breed farm animals that produce milk at a higher rate. This would give families an animalfood source that is constant as well as nutritional.There are endless possibilities that could provide children with the nutrients required formaturation. Educating people on how to properly handle animal byproducts will help them tobecome healthier and for food to become safer. Developing easier technologies can increase foodproduction in developing worlds. By using all departments and focusing on this issue nutritionaldeficiencies can decrease to an acceptable level, and people will experience better lives. Thismicronutrient deficiency issue will only progress if action is not taken and help is not