Tell a Tale

Not so long ago, whenever Juan González would go to the butcher he’d buy a few nice steaks for himself and cow lung, known here as  bofe , to chop up and feed his dog. “Now  bofe  is what I eat, when I can get it,” said the 55-year-old elevator repairman on a street in the Venezuelan capital. With  prolonged shortages of basic foods , Venezuelans have been forced to shift their diets to whatever they can find. And what they can find is not necessarily healthy. Milk, meat and beans – the main sources of protein in the Venezuelan diet – are hard to find or sold at exorbitant prices, and many are filling up on empty carbs from pasta, rice and the traditional  arepa  cornmeal cake. “These fill you up and make you fat but they are not nutritious,” said nutritionist Héctor Cruces. “Viscera are high in fat and low on protein.” A study revealed last month by Venezuela’s top three universities showed that 12% of those polled said they were eating less...