A video by Cuban creator Leidyta FreeSoul has gone viral on Facebook, humorously and ironically showcasing the lunch her mother prepared for her: a plate of "rice with meat" where the meat is noticeably missing.
The 38-second clip has garnered over 351,000 views, 24,269 likes, and 1,737 comments, immediately resonating with millions of Cubans who experience the same reality daily.
“Rice with meat, mom,” the young woman repeats as she shows the plate, unsuccessfully searching for the promised ingredient.
"It seems they are isolated from each other, it looks like we have a restraining order," he says about the rice and the (absent) meat, before concluding with a phrase that is already circulating as a meme: "Is it time to lie? the Cuban edition."
The phrase "Cuban edition" accurately summarizes what millions of families on the island experience every day: degraded versions of dishes that in any other country would include their basic ingredients.
The scene is not anecdotal. Eating meat in Cuba has become a luxury that most families cannot afford: ground beef — the cheapest option — costs 300 Cuban pesos (CUP) per pound, chicken reaches 500 CUP per pound, and pork can go up to 1,500 CUP per pound, in a country where the minimum state salary hovers around 4,000-5,000 CUP monthly.
Cuban pork production collapsed from 200,000 tons annually in 2018 to barely 9,000 tons in 2026, according to recent data, which has skyrocketed prices and emptied tables of animal protein.
The video by Leidyta FreeSoul is part of a wave of viral content that humorously documents the food crisis, highlighting its seriousness. A Cuban woman showed the hard bread she gets at the store in a clip that surpassed 325,900 views, while another young woman reported being without regulated bread for over three weeks in her community.
The influencer Lino García, known as "The Cuban Creator," posted a video crying from hunger that surpassed 622,000 views on Facebook, where the comments left no doubt: "The people are suffering from hunger, the government has taken everything away."
Even the most absurd humor reflects the seriousness of the situation: a pig dragging a man in a wheelchair as "alternative transportation" surpassed one million views, with comments noting that "seeing pigs is a symbol of power."
Surveys from 2026 reveal that 70% of Cubans skip daily meals and that 80% consider the current situation worse than the Special Period of the 1990s, when the collapse of the USSR plunged the island into a devastating crisis.
Humor, as always in Cuba, is the way to express what cannot be silenced: that in the "Cuban edition" of lunch, meat has long been absent.
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