Basics

A type of Therapeutic Food used to tread Advanced Stages of Starvation
Given due to Modern Agriculture, Food Preservation , and Nutrition / Healthcare etc they aren’t TOO relevant as There Are No More Natural Famines etc, OS Recipes/ Industrial Food Equipment etc can’t HURT ongoing situations too much (Short of if it lead to resources being diverted/wasted, Re Redundancy Waste and Cash vs Material Donations )
- All in all, long term investment in Resiliency / Anti-Fragility is a good idea
ANYHOW they are a Shelf Stable Ready to Eat Food that is specifically formulated to not cause people to go into shock / have issues associated with rapid changes in diet following prolonged starvation
- As with Hypothermia , humanity has learned the hard way on HOW to do so, and the History of Foods Given as Aid Post-Famine (especially various Broth / Gelatin type concoctions post WW2 are an interesting read)
Most Off The Shelf Options are a sort of Thin Paste (Akin to Peanut Butter ) but fortified in a manner akin to Soylent (Company) ) Stored in essentially a scaled up Ketchup Packet

Industry Standards

The First and Most Common Option
Essentially Fortified+Specifically Formulated Peanut Butter
Comes in a Sachet / Packet
Semi-Closed Source, while it is a European Company, they collaborate to make it in more local places
- Need to do some proper muckraking on this. ( User: Eric editorializing a bit here) It seems like on the scale from some horrible greenwashing bit like Climate Change Denialism or Pro-Smoking PR Pushes a la Fear Uncertainty and Doubt / Monsanto to some hypothetical “Perfect Corporation” they are maybe like a 7 or so?
- Citation needed but the cost is acceptable for the NGOs / the UN working with it and it is being made semi-locally
  - SOME Food Aid had ties to Lobbying and was essentially “Oh crap we got soooooo good at Maize production that we broke capitalism, quick send it to them i guess!” Which while it CAN provide food, can at the same time make Domestic Food Production impossible leading to a tricky situation
    - Re Economic Protectionism in the Context of Sustainable Development / Neo-Colonialism etc
Anywho though, good stuff and it’s used/stockpiled by all the big groups
Gotta add citations to this later etc

Some of these may not have been RTE and/or inline with the Current Healthcare Recommendations, but are interesting/worth mentioning

MRE
- A Related Concept (In terms of Emergency Preparedness / Government Stockpiling for Disaster Relief etc) However for “Normal MealsL by Non-Starving People
Freeze-Dried Pouch Meals (While not as “Ready to Eat” as RUTF or MRE’s, these fulfill a similar role of Storability for Stockpiles)
Peanut Butter / Plumpy'Nut

The Wikipedia Page on RUTF
The UNICEF page on RUTF
An Open Access Article in “ehehe” Titled “One Page in the History of Starvation and Refeeding”
- Great read, need to see if it’s used in the The Wikipedia Page on Refeeding Syndrome