Mud cakes become staple diet for starving Haitians

With little cash and import prices rocketing half the population faces starvation in Haiti.

Mud cakes become the staple diet as cost of food soars beyond a family's reach.


The photo shows a woman in Cité Soleil, one of Port-au-Prince's worst slums, making the clay-based food.

Brittle and gritty - and as revolting as they sound - these are "mud cakes". For years they have been consumed by impoverished pregnant women seeking calcium, a risky and medically unproven supplement, but now the cakes have become a staple for entire families.

The bit of salt and margarine added can’t disguise what is essentially dirt. It’s dirt with a lingering after taste but it can help ward off the pangs of hunger for starving Haitians.

"It stops the hunger," said Marie-Carmelle Baptiste, 35, a producer, eyeing up her stock laid out in rows. She did not embroider their appeal. "You eat them when you have to."

These days many people have to. The global food and fuel crisis has hit Haiti harder than perhaps any other country, pushing a population mired in extreme poverty towards starvation and revolt.

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