Poor people in the inner city often don't have access to nutritious, healthy food, since the only food markets sell pre-processed junk items and maybe a few miserable vegetables. Many residents don't have cars, so they can't drive to nice markets in better-favored areas. Folks are talking about this over at Mark Bittman's blog today - check out the thread.
Here's one solution: The People's Grocery in West Oakland, a food group operating in a devastated, high-crime residential and industrial district.
People's Grocery is a community-based organization in West Oakland that develops creative solutions to the health, environmental and economic challenges our community faces every day.
The number one cause of death in West Oakland is not violence, but heart disease - accounting for 29% of all deaths from 1996-1998. Source: Alameda County Public Health Department of Vital Statistics
We want to change the way the food system works. Our mission is to develop a self-reliant, socially just and sustainable food system in West Oakland through community-based, youth-focused and innovative social enterprises, urban agricultural projects, educational programs and public policy initiatives that foster healthy, equitable and ecological community development.
We believe everyone deserves healthy food, regardless of income. In our view, it's about "food justice" - the human right to Healthy Food for Everyone.
The People's Grocery runs community gardens, a food warehouse and a mobile grocery (in a van) that wanders around the neighborhood, selling good food, some of it locally produced, to folks who cannot reach the abundant groceries and produce markets of our city.
People's Grocery also sponsors all manner of education projects that teach cooking and nutrition. Three or four recent college graduates founded the group several years ago, and look what they have accomplished!
Read this essay on food policy for more background, and check out Food First!, an Oakland food policy think tank.
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