Does the Cuban Food Industry Take Health Risks into Account?

Yenisel Rodriguez Perez

Photo: losportales.cu
Photo: losportales.cu

HAVANA TIMES — Let’s do a simple experiment. Look at the nutritional information on any Ciego Montero soft drink and look for the percentage that its sugar content represents in a 2000 calorie diet.

I’ll give you a heads up: this information doesn’t exist.

Do you know how much sugar the orange flavored soda can has? 30 grams! This is much more than the higher limit in daily recommendations for a healthy diet.

That is to say, any sugar you’ve consumed before or after drinking this soft drink, will give you an overdose. This overdose can easily reach extremely dangerous levels if you drink soft drinks on a regular basis, when you snack, at parties, outings or as a treat for your child.

A friend of mine thinks that being diabetic is just as bad as being HIV+, however, the majority of people don’t seem to really care about it. Our food industry takes advantage of this last fact and consequently encourages the survival of these bad eating habits.

We have more than enough examples of this kind in our national market, which just goes to show how ineffective our institutions responsible for controlling industrial actions in the subject of public health are. Today, our suppliers see a green light to sell us as much junk as possible.

And that’s not to mention social food program that are in force in Cuba.

We have, for example, the infamous Lactasol. I don’t believe there’s another product in the world that is sweeter than this one. It’s a readymade drink made of soya and chocolate for the elderly, which I suspect is a population control tactic. They “rot” in the bodega neighborhood stores.

We also have the case of out of date content on the packaging of products, hiding the fact that they may have gone bad and isn’t reflected in the final price of the item a lot of the time.

Examples abound and you just have to take a look around our stores in order to answer this question. That’s why we shouldn’t stop taking our own precautions in a market that has been colonized by the indifference of our regulatory bodies and the greed of our bureaucrats.

Let’s not be blinded by Ciego Montero.

Yenisel Rodriguez

Yenisel Rodriguez Perez: I have lived in Cuba my entire life, except for several months in 2013 when I was in Miami with my father. Despite the 90 miles that separate Havana and Miami, I find profound reasons in both for political and community activism. My encounter with socio-cultural anthropology eight years ago prepared me for a commitment of love for cultural diversity.