14ymedio, Havana, 12 March 2024 — Changing Cuban eating habits, with an emphasis on health and local availability, at the same time the country is experiencing a food shortage is the aim of a nutritional education project sponsored since 2017 by the Spanish-French entrepreneur María Paco.
“People often laugh when I talk about diversifying the Cuban diet and learning to eat healthier — with vegetables, with no sugar and abandoning the idea of a ’main course,’ which here means meat,” she tells EFE from her organic farm on the outskirts of Havana.
Paco quit her job in France as a fruit broker for a big international corporation and came to Cuba for the first time in 2014. “What I noticed was how little Cubans knew about the benefits of nutritional education, especially in a country where everything is in short supply,” she explains.
“My parents and grandparents were campesinos who taught me the importance of using everything that came out of the fields”
“My parents and grandparents were campesinos — peasant farmers — who taught me the importance of using everything that came out of the fields, of not throwing anything away,” she says in describing her Spanish roots.
Her alternative menu might feature pureed eggplant on toasted bread; salads made with lentils, cabbage and chili; or pizzas topped with basil, rosemary and parsley instead of the usual tomato and cheese. She even suggests substituting fruits such as bananas for artificially flavored carbonated beverages.
“I started with the people who were helping me on the farm. At