Cubans Between Poor Nutrition and a Health Crisis
Cheaper ultra-processed foods with no nutritional value are replacing agricultural products in today’s Cuba.
By Natalia Lopez Moya (14ymedio)
HAVANA TIMES – In the kitchen of Arminda, a 72-year-old woman who lives in Central Havana, today’s lunch requires neither a pot nor seasoning: two boiled sausages and a piece of white bread. For bedtime, she’s saved a canned lemon soda and an industrial pastry her niece brought her. Fruit shows up only sporadically; vegetables, a luxury she left behind. Diabetic, obese, and hypertensive, Arminda is spending these days battling chikungunya—a virus that, in her case, finds a body already weakened by poor nutrition.
Her story isn’t exceptional. It is, rather, a portrait of the contemporary Cuban diet, increasingly shifted toward ultra-processed foods, phenomenon health authorities rarely mention and one that intersects with growing vulnerabilities to diseases such as dengue or chikungunya, which now afflict practically the entire Island.
Ultra-processed foods are made with cheap industrial ingredients (starches, glucose syrups, hydrogenated fats), additives (colorants, flavor enhancers, emulsifiers), and intensive processing techniques that make them long-lasting, irresistible, and easy to consume. These products combine large amounts of sugar, fat, and salt—the so-called addictive triad—along with additives that boost flavor, texture, and smell. Walking into any ration store, private business, or small kiosk in Cuba and finding them is almost guaranteed: sweet cookies, instant soups, powdered drink mixes, croquettes of uncertain origin, and sweets with a long list of chemicals.
Recent international studies—including those published in The Lancet and The Journals of Gerontology—conclude that high consumption of ultra-processed foods triples the risk of frailty in older adults and increases the likelihood of obesity, diabetes, cardiometabolic diseases, depression, and even premature mortality. In the U.S., 70% of calories come from these products; in Spain, 32%. In Cuba, without official statistics, on-the-ground perception points to a rapid rise.
This dietary trend stems from the collapse of agriculture and the food industry, triggering shortages and the consequent skyrocketing prices of fresh products. In entire neighborhoods, plantains have reached astronomical prices; sweet potatoes have become a luxury; vegetables are inaccessible to most. Meanwhile, a package of imported cookies can cost less than a pound of beans.
A recent indication of how poor nutrition is taking a toll in Cuba comes from a 2024 study conducted among students at the University of Medical Sciences of Havana. The research—one of the few published on the Island regarding nutritional quality—found a clear correlation between young people with diets low in fruits, vegetables, and proteins, and high in refined and ultra-processed products, and those reporting poorer sleep quality.
Although the study did not delve into the link between ultra-processed foods and specific diseases, it did reveal a troubling pattern: deficient nutrition affects basic bodily recovery processes, including sleep cycles, which in turn modulate immune function. The high prevalence of diets based on bread, pizza, sodas, cookies, and cheap processed meats shows how deeply the food crisis has penetrated even academic spaces.
In recent years, the arrival of imported products from Mexico, Panama, Spain, or Brazil has multiplied the problem: most of what reaches the Island is ultra-processed because it’s easier to store, less perishable, and above all, more profitable. Their bright packaging—with flashy colors, cartoon designs, and words like “premium,” “natural,” “light”—creates the illusion of quality, in stark contrast to the reality: many of these foods offer empty calories, promote chronic inflammation, and weaken immune responses.
A particularly serious risk given their connection to diabetes and various cancers—and especially at a time when dengue, Zika, and chikungunya are striking the country with waves of contagion.
As Dr. Perla María Trujillo Pedroza of the Manuel Piti Fajardo Polyclinic in Villa Clara recently warned, “many patients in Cuba are progressing toward more symptomatic subacute stages” of chikungunya, due in part to “the poor nutrition of our population, which does not support a competent immune system.” Her words, shared on social media, have circulated more widely than any official alert from the Ministry of Public Health.
In any Cuban school, the image repeats: snacks brought from home consist of sugary drinks, bread with mass-produced spreads, and cookies full of artificial coloring.
The State also plays a contradictory role: some items still delivered through the ration book, such as children’s compotes and mincemeats, are ultra-processed. These are also the products almost exclusively distributed to people affected by hurricanes and a large share of what digital platforms sell to emigrants who purchase food for their families on the Island.
It’s not the first-time poor nutrition has left a national impact. In the 1990s, during the Special Period, polyneuritis affected more than 50,000 Cubans, causing vision loss, muscle weakness, and mobility problems. Authorities initially attempted to conceal the crisis and silence the fact that its true root was a severe deficiency of B-complex vitamins due to an extremely poor diet.
Three decades later, experts see troubling parallels: nutritional deficiencies, monotonous diets based on low-quality products, and vulnerability to infections.
While global scientific alarm grows, Cuba’s official media barely mentions the increasing presence of ultra-processed foods on Cuban tables, except to cite foreign studies. There are no public campaigns warning about their impact, no updated dietary guidelines, no transparent national data on consumption.
In Arminda’s home, the lemon soda sits on the table. Her niece has also brought her a package of cookies filled with vanilla cream “to lift her spirits” and help her forget, for a moment, the pain in her knees and wrists caused by chikungunya. The elderly woman smiles, grateful. She doesn’t know that this gift—tasty and processed—is part of a silent epidemic now also eroding the country’s health.
First published in Spanish by 14ymedio and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.