Food Consumption Patterns Part 2

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9. The Entrance of Imported Snack Food
Introduction
Food preparation specialists have helped popular class Haitians adapt to deepening poverty while
still allowing them to obtain high calories at low cost. In the process they invigorate the local
economy and earn income to support themselves and their families. But alternative sources of
prepared food have emerged over the last two decades that compete with the local food preparation
economy. The earliest of these foods were sugar and malt based beverages (sodas, juices, and
maltas), cheese cubes, condensed milk, precooked sardines, and corn flakes. More recent snack
foods incled cookies, salted crackers, and cheese puffs. These foods not part of an integrated local
adaptation to poverty but rather a global one. Most are prepared, not in impoverished Haiti and not
with Haitian produce, but rather with low cost ingredients from industrial producers in other
countries. Some of these countries are geographically near to Haiti, such as the Dominican
Republic and Guatemala; others on the far side of the world, such as India and Pakistan. All are
developing countries.
There are problems with the current RUF (Read to Use Foods) sold in Haiti that should not be
ignored. The foods are imported and sold on the streets, in open-air markets, and in stores, where
they come into competition not only with local produce, but also with the cottage food preparation
industry seen in the previous section and arguably lead consumers away from success in the quest
for affordable and, if not nutritious, at least high caloric foods. The issue is not so much that
Haitians are eating the low nutritional foods—such as extruded corn snacks like cheese puffs,
made from degermed corn meal (meaning most of the nutrients are stripped away--but that they
forego opportunities to spend limited resources on more nutritious fare. As seen in earlier sections,
sometimes the problem is simply that higher quality foods are not available, as they have short
shelf lives and do not ship well. But now that popular class Haitians have access to these lownutrition
snack foods on nearly every street corner, they are being used as quick substitutes for
more balanced, true meals and for the oil laden but often hi-protein street foods.
That is not the worst of it. At least some of the earliest imports were high quality foods. Condensed
milk sold in cans, powdered milk, and cheese cubes were three RUFs that offered popular class
Haitians an affordable high protein food supplement. But high level entrepreneurs, almost entirely
local individuals and corporate entities, have increasingly taken over the market with introduction
of imitation brands concocted from low cost and low quality ingredients, most commonly palm oil
and soy byproducts. The nutritional threat food substitutes and disingenuous advertising is a
problem anywhere. But in a country like Haiti where close to 50% of the population is comprised
of a nutritionally stressed and extremely poor people induced to spend scarce cash reserves on junk
food the problem is especially acute and should be considered and issue of humanitarian concern
for everyone, Haitian and otherwise. Indeed, given the flaunting of accepted international
standards and the impoact on consumers, the international justice system should take special note.
In the sections that follow we attempt to provide as complete a picture as possible of the
complexities of the problem.