Bread with oil and salt, accompanied by a glass of water with sugar. This is the "millionaire's breakfast" that the Cuban content creator Lesyanis Portilla shows with bitter irony in a video posted on TikTok, which garnered over 153,700 views in less than 24 hours.
"A Cuban breakfast and yet many will not be able to have it," he comments at the beginning of the recording, in which he shows how to prepare a breakfast with just a few ingredients.
In the video, shared from her account "Stories of a Cuban," Portilla starts by spreading a little oil on a piece of bread. "Be careful," she warns with irony, before adding a pinch of salt with her fingers.
To accompany it, prepare a glass of water with sugar, an alternative to milk or chocolate, products that many Cuban families struggle to obtain.
The content creator explains that one liter of oil can cost between 3,000 and 5,000 Cuban pesos (CUP), an amount that contrasts with the minimum monthly salary of 3,210 CUP.
White sugar is also not accessible to everyone. "It usually appears together with brown sugar, but there are Cubans who can afford that luxury," Portilla remarks as he adds the sweetener to the water.
Shortages also affect basic products such as bread. In Cuba, the allocated bread ration has been reduced from 80 to 40 grams and its price has increased from 0.05 to 0.75 CUP per unit, according to testimonies collected in Havana.
The difficulties in accessing food have also been acknowledged by the authorities themselves. In June 2026, the Minister of Food Industry, Alberto López Díaz, admitted the issues in the distribution of products through the supply booklet, including oil, chicken, and yogurt.
The high cost of food had already been reported months earlier by Cuban activist Yamilka Lafita, who calculated that a simple breakfast consisting of bread, butter, powdered milk, and chocolate could cost 7,250 CUP, more than double the monthly minimum wage.
"Water, sugar, and bread with oil and salt—that is a millionaire's breakfast for today's Cuban," Portilla concludes, highlighting through humor and irony the challenges many families on the island face in putting something as basic as breakfast on the table.
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