[SustainableTompkins] Food Justice: "Green Carts"

[Elan Shapiro]

A Streetcart Named Healthy
NY Times Editorial
March 1, 2008

Health experts have taken to calling low-income neighborhoods "food 
deserts," and it is easy to see why. Supermarkets are usually in 
short supply and specialty produce and health-food stores are even 
rarer. Residents are often forced to do their food shopping in small 
grocery stores that carry few fresh fruits and vegetables.

Not surprisingly, these are the same communities that suffer most 
from obesity and related diseases, including diabetes and heart 
disease.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the City Council have come up with an 
innovative solution. Pressed by Speaker Christine Quinn, the Council 
withstood protests from the retail food industry and approved 1,000 
new licenses for mobile fruit and vegetable stands - designating them 
for the parts of the city that need them most.

There are already about 4,000 so-called green carts, but they rarely 
venture far from the tonier - and healthier - neighborhoods. The new 
initiative will put green carts on the sidewalks of the poorest 
areas, which are home to a disproportionate share of roughly half of 
the city's residents who are overweight.

These neighborhoods are packed with fast-food burger and fried 
chicken restaurants. A city survey found that the chances of finding 
bananas, oranges or apples were small. No more than 6 percent of the 
bodegas the city looked at carried fresh greens.

The city could help even more by publicizing the green carts in their 
new neighborhoods, reminding residents of the benefits of a healthy 
diet, and handing out recipes for cooking with fresh produce.

Mr. Bloomberg and his health commissioner, Dr. Tom Frieden, and Ms. 
Quinn deserve credit for turning common sense into good health 
policy: banning smoking in public places, limiting trans fats in 
restaurant food and forcing calorie disclosure from chain eateries. 
We can now add the green carts to that sound list.


-- 
Elan Shapiro
Sustainable Tompkins Community Partnership Coordinator
Sustainable Living Associates, Principal
Frog's Way B&B
211 Rachel Carson Way
Ithaca, NY 14850
607-275-0249    607-592-8402 Cell

"We must be the change we want to see in the world"
	          Mohandas Gandhi