THE SOCIALISM DIET: Venezuelans Lost 19 Lbs. Thanks To Starvation Last Year

If you have a serious weight problem but can’t control the urge to eat, there’s always this solution: move to socialist Elysium Venezuela, where people are starving due to a lack of food.

The 2016 Living Conditions Survey, which was conducted among 6,500 families, found not only that nearly 75% of Venezuelans lost an average of 19 pounds for lack of food, but that up to 32.5% eat only once or twice a day.

The Venezuelans are so desperate that some have taken to slaughtering flamingos and anteaters for food to eat. The study found 65% of respondents said their children skipped school because of food, some even taking their parents’ places in the long food lines. Robert Linares, a Maracaibo waste disposal worker, told the Miami Herald, “Sometimes we only find the animal’s heads, guts and legs. We used to see this very little in the past, but this practice is now out of control and on the rise.”

In the last year, Venezuela has been debilitated with triple-digit inflation and a roughly 80% currency collapse..

As Forbes noted last summer:

A Bolivarian Republic, Venezuela turned to socialism in 1998 when Hugo Chavez was elected president after two unsuccessful coup attempts to oust his predecessor. The new regime brought not only a new constitution, but higher oil prices as well. The following year Chavez passed laws redistributing land and wealth, which he followed in 2005 with a land reform decree that would eliminate larger estates to the benefit of the poor in rural areas. In 2007 the government took control of important oil projects in the Orinoco Delta and later expropriated two U.S. oil companies, furthering Chavez’s nationalization plans.

Nationalization continued with the Bank of Venezuela and household fuels distributors and petrol stations. In 2011, with a 27% annual inflation rate, the Venezuelan government introduced price controls of some basic goods (they would extend to other products in the following years).

By the time of Chavez’s death in 2013, inflation had grown to 50% and rose to 63.4% in the following year. Towards the end of 2014, the country entered into a recession.