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Googling, "Cuba daily caloric intake."
The Issue of Food Security in Cuba José Alvarez
Cuba's Food Balance Sheets FAO's food balance sheets provide the means for analyzing Cuba's situation concerning nutrition (daily per capita intake of calories, proteins, and fats), food waste, and food import dependency.
Daily Per Capita Intake of Calories, Protein, and Fat, 1982-1999 As discussed earlier in this fact sheet, FAO's minimum daily nutritional requirements for Cuba are 2,400 Kcal of calories, 75 grams of fat, and 72 grams (29 and 43 grams of animal and vegetable origins, respectively) of proteins. What is Cuba's record with regard to the nutrition of its population? To address that question, the data presented by FAO, the Cuban government, and some Cuban scholars are examined.
Cuban figures reported to FAO came from the following sources:
* the rationing system.
* food sold at subsidized prices in public institutions such as dining rooms in factories, schools, nurseries, and in cafeterias and stands.
* food distributed in places such as hospitals and nursing homes.
* food produced in rural and urban self-provisioning plots sold by workers or farmers.
* food purchased in other food outlets such as the recently created parallel markets.
Data collected from so many different sources by many different organizations are very likely to contain intentional and/or accidental errors that result in inconsistencies. Unfortunately, the Cuban government suspended the delivery of data to FAO at the end of the 1990s. (The author tried to contact the FAO office in Havana, Cuba, to check if they had more data available but to no avail; the electronic messages went unanswered.)
Daily per capita intakes of calories, proteins, and fats for the period 1980-1999 are shown in Figure 1 . They show the data from FAO and the official data combined with those of some Cuban authors [FAO's data were taken from http://www.fao.org.] Official Cuban statistics were obtained from CEE (various issues), and from Campbell (2000), Ferriol Muruaga (1996), and Nova González (2000)]. The gap between the two sets is significant concerning calories, relatively small for proteins, and much greater for fat in later years. FAO data, as explained above, concluded in 1997.
Figure 1. Daily per capita intake of calories, proteins, and fat, and FAO's minimum requirements (MR), 1980-1999.
>From 1980 until 1991 in the official Cuban data and until 1993 for FAO
data, Cuba exceeded the minimum daily requirements of 2,400 calories.
Although they had been decreasing since 1989 and 1991, respectively,
it is not until 1992 and 1994 that the intake falls below 2,400
calories. The pattern is different regarding proteins. From 1980 until
1989, the figures remained very close above the minimum daily
requirement of 72 grams; after that year, they decreased abruptly and
have remained below the minimum requirement. Data for fat intake
behaves similarly to that for proteins. In the 1980s, levels of fat
intake were slightly above the minimum daily requirement of 75 grams.
Since 1988, according to the official data, and 1991 for the FAO data,
fat intake levels of 75 grams per day remain below the minimum daily
requirement. It is obvious that these low levels coincide with the
establishment of the "Special Period in Time of Peace" (a series of
measures announced by the Cuban government in September of 1991 which
was intended to deal with the economic hardships brought to Cuba by
the collapse of the Soviet bloc). The startling finding, however, is
that, although the Cuban government supplied the numbers to FAO, the
official statistics in Cuba's official Anuario Estadístico are not
only below those of FAO, but they are reported to have begun
decreasing even before the establishment of the Special Period in all
three cases (1989 for calories, fats, and proteins), with fat being
the one showing the worst scenario. When the daily per capita intake
of calories, proteins, and fats is broken down by animal and vegetable
sources, the decreases experienced in the three nutritive measures
were greater from animal sources, which have higher nutritive value
than vegetable sources.
A cursory survey of the literature reveals discrepancies in several areas by different authors. For example, a comprehensive study on the nutritional status of Cubans at the beginning of the 1980s was summarized in the following manner:
The nutriture of today's Cubans appear to be better than that of the average third world country. This is not unexpected since moderate and severe malnutrition are not that commonly prevalent in the Caribbean as a region. It does not appear, however, that the nutriture of Cubans, both objectively and subjectively, is better today than during the so-called prerevolutionary years. Aside from the unending argument regarding the effects of redistribution through rationing, the per-capita caloric intake has remained essentially unchanged considering the limitations of nutritional data obtained from food balance sheets (Gordon, 1983, p. 30).
Other scholars, however, consider Cuba's nutritional performance a relative success. It is the result, according to Amador and Peña (1991), of a number of measures implemented by the Cuban government. One of the factors directly related to food and nutrition was the establishment of the National Food and Nutrition Surveillance System in 1977. Monckerberg (1981) stated that, despite the different economic systems present in Chile and Cuba, both countries "have developed systems of intervention which are comparable and similarly successful" (p. 120).
Comments and assessments after the Special Period, including those of Cuban authors, do not include the word "success." Ferriol Muruaga (1996) states that the changes in Cuba's economy between 1989 and 1993 impacted in a negative manner the health and nutritional status of the population. Reports included the following: (1) the worsening of the nutritional status of mother and baby; (2) an increase in the number of newborns below normal weights; (3) decreasing nutritional levels for pregnant women and children younger than one year of age; (4) increasing numbers of deaths from infectious diseases and tuberculosis; (5) death of the elderly due to low nutritional levels; (6) micronutrient deficiencies; and (7) increase in illnesses from food poisoning.
Perhaps the problem with the most negative impact on the health of Cubans, the one that generated more attention within and outside Cuba, was the epidemic of optic and peripheral neuropathy from late 1991 to mid-1993. A delegation of five scientists from the United States were invited by both "The U.S. + Cuba Medical Project" (based in New York) and Cuba's Ministry of Health to travel to the island to work with their Cuban counterparts in researching and eliminating this epidemic. In a subsequent report, Tucker and Hedges (1993) estimated the number of cases as 50,000. Although a few other causal hypotheses were studied, Tucker and Hedges stated that, "it is generally believed that an interaction of some toxin or toxins, in combination with nutritional deficiency, is likely to be the major cause" (p. 349). The fact is, after the Cuban government began distributing vitamin supplements to every citizen in April 1993, the epidemic appeared to be controlled by mid-1993 (p. 349). Some minor outbreaks of a different nature have been reported in subsequent years but have apparently been controlled before reaching epidemic proportions.
According to Ferriol Muruaga (1996), achieving an adequate availability of food products is a necessary condition for decreasing nutritional problems. In fact, the 2,218 kilo-calories consumed daily by Cubans after the establishment of the Special Period fall short of the recommended 2,400 calories as discussed above. In the worst moment of the Special Period, according to Vice-President Lage, the daily per capita consumption of calories went down to less than 2,000 while that of protein decreased to 47 grams, both well below the recommended minimum daily requirement (Granma, September 29, 2000).
Food Waste in Relation to Food Available Food availability is the result of a number of factors, with food waste as one of them. As noted in a previous section of this fact sheet, another use of food balance sheets is the quantification of a country's food waste measured against the amount of food available for consumption. Figures for some of Cuba's perishable commodities have been provided to FAO by the Cuban government for the 1980-1997 period (Table 1 ). During the entire study period, more than 4.3 million tons of these products (an average of almost 240,000 tons per year) were wasted. The ratio of food waste over food available ranged from more than 10% to almost 15%.
Processed products or those that need refrigerated facilities are not considered. The perishable products selected include starchy roots, vegetables, and fruits. The first reaction to the figures is that they are low when compared with scattered statistics and anecdotal evidence about the inefficiencies of the state collection agency (EDIS FE484 ). One has to recall that country officials are the ones who provide gross estimates in the absence of surveys. In the case of Cuba, the figures are highly suspect.
Import Dependency Ratios The food balance sheets contain data on food imports and food available for consumption. A general background to start this section is provided by two interesting paragraphs by Cuban authors. In 1993, Nova González wrote:
Despite possessing an important proportion of fertile soils, some availability of underground water, favorable climatic conditions with two well-defined dry and wet periods, and sun all year round; despite these general favorable conditions for agricultural production during all months [of the year], Cuba has historically imported an important volume of food, many of those food products can be substituted and/or decreased through national production (p. 76).
Nieto and Delgado wrote a few years later:
Despite the investments made in infrastructure during decades, and the application of science and technology, agricultural activities [in Cuba] could not achieve the country's self-sufficiency in food, [still] depending to a large extent on the complement of imports of food and raw materials for their processing, in addition to the majority of inputs (2001, p. 47).
Data on food imports and on food available for consumption facilitate the computation of import dependency ratios (Table 2 ). Recalling the caveats concerning FAO data, several observations can be made. For the period 1980-1997 (last year of FAO data), the general trend is one of decreasing ratios; that is, imports have become a smaller percentage of total food available for consumption. In 1980, Cuba imported 70% of the food available for consumption. In the following years, the import dependency ratios experienced modest decreases. One has to remember that those were the years of special commercial arrangements with the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) when Cuba imported high levels of food products. In the last years of the 1990s (since the establishment of the Special Period), the ratio has decreased considerably.
Interesting results are obtained when one compares Cuba's import dependency ratios before and after the 1959 revolution. The figures for the 1980-1997 period range from a low of 42% in 1997 to a high of 70% in 1980. As reported by Nova González (1993, p. 76), data taken from official Cuban sources of that time include 31% in 1954, 23.3% in 1955, and 20.7% in 1956. It is obvious that, with the passage of time, Cuba has become more dependent on foreign sources to feed its population.
A two-article study by García Alvarez et al. (1996; 1997) addresses the issue of import substitution of foodstuffs as "a necessity that cannot be postponed." The two articles are part of a base study that will provide the basis for plans to reduce imports while increasing domestic production. Only time will tell if those plans will materialize.
References Alvarez, José. 2004. Cuba's Agricultural Sector. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida.
Amador, Manuel, and Manuel Peña. 1991. Nutrition and Health Issues in Cuba: Strategies for a Developing Country. Food and Nutrition Bulletin 13 (4): 311-317. <SNIP>
-- Michael Pugliese