On Friday, Sujei Lugo, a Puerto Rican currently living in Boston, posted a disconcerting message onto Twitter: “The FEMA ‘meals’ my brother received today…” In the forefront were a dozen cans of BBQ potted meat, Cheez-Its, Airheads, Baby Ruth, and plastic cutlery. In the background, was a box (produced by LongBranch Partners) that read 12 entree, 12 starch, 12 fruit, 12 dessert, and 12 cutlery kit. But looking at the contents of the box, it’d be hard to imagine how these items fit these descriptions.
For her part, Lugo says the potted meat is the entree, the Cheez-Its are the starch, the Airheads are the fruit, and the Baby Ruth is the dessert.
“FEMA has used a variety of approaches to provide Puerto Rico the largest emergency food and water distribution effort in US history,” FEMA spokesperson Ron Roth said. “One of these approaches has been contracting for ‘snack packs,’ such as what is shown in the Twitter picture. These snacks are not meant to replace full meals. We have canceled future orders for these packs and the remaining inventory will be distributed to the portion of the survivor population that can use the snacks effectively.”
Lugo’s image went viral and renewed criticism of the rations FEMA has distributed on the island in the wake of Hurricane Maria. In late October during a public appearance, San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz held up chocolate pudding and other snacks, showing visible signs of disappointment and anger. Some experts have said that critics don’t always have insight into how emergency food works. “It’s a delicate dance,” said Jarrod Goentzel, the head of the Humanitarian Response Lab at MIT, told The Washington Post. “But it’s not as if they’re shipping in boatloads of candy.”
What complicates things is that local elected officials have also opened and repacked boxes before distributing them, so it’s not always clear what items come from FEMA or from other relief organizations, The Washington Post adds. What is clear is that people aren’t receiving packages filled with nutritional foods. When CBS News Correspondent David Begnaud tweeted about David, a Puerto Rican man who received one of these packages, others shared similar experiences. Over the course of two tweets, Glory Torres wrote that her parents received a box filled with pudding, potato chips, Vienna sausages, and Kit Kat bars. “In [another[ box was 16 SNICKERS, 16!!!” she wrote. “The government don’t care at all and both are diabetics.”