Sri Lanka Thriposha Program

The Thriposha Program (Sinhala: ශ්‍රී ලංකා ත්‍රිපෝෂ වැඩසටහන) is the first comprehensive island-wide nutrition supplementary food program carried out by the Government of Sri Lanka (Jayatissa, 2005). The distributed food item through this program is Thriposha (which means triple nutrient) and it is a pre-cooked cereal and legume-based food containing maize (66%), soya (30%), full cream milk powder (3%) and vitamin (0.1%) and minerals [(0.9%) Jayatissa, 2005; Tharaka et al., 2014]. The manufacturing plant of Thriposha is located at Kapuwatta in Ja-Ela. History The program was initiated by the government in 1973 with the assistance of the CARE organization, a U.S. private voluntary organization (Hornstein, 1986; Jayatissa, 2005). Support for the program was also provided by USAID, the United States Agency for International Development (Hornstein, 1986). Initially, the prepared food was imported from the USA and distributed in the country. In 1976, the program was undertaken by the Ministry…