The Cuba Diet

We do not questions where our food comes from. We take for granted our meals; we eat knowing that tomorrow we will eat again. We take for granted having seasonal foods at our neighborhood grocery store year round, never questioning where it came from and the impact it most likely has on that particular country and its people who produce it. But what would happen to a country like the United States if suddenly and unexpectedly our foods where no longer massed produced by corporate farms and conveniently found at grocery stores, if we no longer imported foods? Would we be able to sustain our population on what we alone produced? Cuba had no other choice then to do so after their ties with the former Soviet Union banished…

In The Cuba Diet, Bill McKibben closely examines Cuba’s creation of what may be “the world's largest working model of a semi-sustainable agriculture, one that doesn't rely nearly as heavily as the rest of the world does on oil, on chemicals, on shipping vast quantities of food back and forth.” The sudden collapse of the Soviet Union left Cuba outside the international economic system completely, with very little foreign exchange. Cuba’s one and only option was to cultivate/ produce as much food as possible to sustain their population; which they did and in a very efficient manner. They grew food on private land and “thousands of pocket-sized urban market gardens—and, lacking chemicals and fertilizers, much of that food became de facto organic.” This food crisis could have crippled Cuba, but instead it mobilized a system of food production that has become well know around the world.

Food and Memory

In Food and memory, Jon Holtzman’s notes that the “sensuality of food causes it to be a particularly intense and compelling medium for memory. The experience of food evokes recollection, which is not simply cognitive but also emotional and physical… (p 365)” Food is never forgotten after it has been consumed. The food you eat and your experience while eating that food is kept in your memory. These memories intertwine with emotion and physicality. You begin to recall whether you felt satisfied or dissatisfied with the food you consumed; did you crave more of it after you eat that food? The thought of eating a particular vegetable for example, might remind you of your childhood and how you so desperately avoided eating the broccoli or cauliflower your mother served you. Food not only eliminates hunger and provide the body with nutrients but is also arouses and stimulates taste buds, gratifies a craving and triggers memories. Connections are made between the food and your body and stored in your memory.
There is not a food that does not remind me of a specific event in my life, and how that food made me feel at the time I consumed it. My experiences with food have been incredible but I have had food that has made me regret ever eating it. I lived on campus my freshman and sophomore year and remember eating pasta every other day at the dorm room cafeteria. I remember the cream based pasta sitting so heavily in my stomach and the starchy pasta aftertaste in my mouth as I walked back to my door room. Till this day the smell of alfredo sauce or marinara sauce triggers memories of discomfort; goose bumps run up and down my back and I suddenly feel bloated…