The Disaster Diet

When I was in Haiti covering the aftermath of the Jan. 12 monster earthquake, friends from around the world e-mailed or called to ask what it was like. Was the damage as extensive as it seemed on TV? How were the survivors coping? The question I was asked most of all: What are they doing for food? Many friends didn't believe my answer: "They're eating cookies."

Across the quake zone, relief agencies were quickly distributing some 30 tons of high-energy cookies that the World Food Programme (WFP) developed for just this kind of emergency. Each 100-g packet--that's roughly the weight of two Snickers bars--delivers 450 calories of energy, a bunch of vitamins and minerals and up to 15 g of protein and 15 g of fat. Oh, and no more than 15 g of sugar. This is meant to be survival food, not Red Bull in solid form.

The WFP says a grown man should consume five packs of these cookies a day. But few Haitians were getting that many in the chaotic days after the quake. In the tent cities that sprang up all over Port-au-Prince, I frequently saw entire families sharing one person's rations.

Even where the distribution was going smoothly, overburdened relief workers weren't always able to explain how and when to eat the cookies, officially referred to as biscuits. Some people scarfed down their entire five-pack quota in a single meal, leaving them feeling ill; others thought they should eat only one pack a day. "There's a lot of confusion out there," said Raymond Chevalier of the Adventist Development & Relief Agency. "But even if people are getting some cookies to supplement any other food they can find, that will keep them going."

I decided to put that theory to the test, reasoning that it would improve my understanding of what the quake survivors were having to endure. For five days, I ate a single packet of cookies a day, splitting them between lunch and dinner. I also drank a lot of water, some coffee and a glass of fruit juice daily. (And, yes, I did note the irony that hundreds of thousands of quake survivors were going on the Haitian version of the Hollywood Cookie Diet, which has helped various celebrities fit into their skinny jeans.)

But as I began to observe firsthand the scope of the devastation, it didn't take long for me to realize my experiment was not bringing me any closer to the Haitians' experience. Even if I were able to approximate the feeling in their bellies, that was nothing compared with the trauma of losing their homes and loved ones.

Chevalier was right about one thing, however. The cookies did keep me going. I felt no loss of energy or strength and no unbearable hunger pangs.

By the time I left Haiti, my belt was two notches tighter. But I wouldn't recommend the cookies as a weight-loss regimen. For starters, they taste like cardboard. Literally. Even Nicole Menage, the WFP procurement director, admitted that the cookies are "probably not extremely delicious." I had been especially unlucky in that my batch was made in Ecuador. Menage said the next Haiti-bound shipment would be coming from Turkey and have a bit more flavor. Alas, it's vanilla.