Our opinion: Fostering better nutrition is a key to reducing public health costs. That makes the scarcity of large grocery stores in some urban neighborhoods, especially poor ones, a matter of public policy.
It’s easy, and comforting, to assume that in an modern, industrialized nation, everyone eats well. Surely with programs like food stamps, even needy people are doing OK, right?
More than 40,000 people in Albany and Schenectady live in what are known as food deserts — places where a grocery store is at least a mile away. Many are poor. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that about 3,700 of the more than 23,000 people in Albany who don’t live near a large grocer are poor. In Schenectady, about 5,400 of the more than 19,000 people for whom a supermarket trip is more like a trek are low income. Moreover, those estimates were based largely on information gathered before a recession that has made even more people poor.
That’s not just an inconvenience. It’s a public health issue in a society where the problems associated with poor nutrition and obesity are linked to the growing cost of public health care.
One suggestion for alleviating the problem comes from the American Cancer Society, which is reviving the controversial idea of a tax on soda and other sugar-sweetened drinks. The group suggests using the tax to help fund and evaluate child obesity programs. An even more productive use might be to devote a portion of such a tax to local efforts to lure larger grocery stores to urban neighborhoods that don’t have them now.
It would seem doubtful, though, that the state Legislature will be any more inclined to implement a soda tax than it was last year, when it refused to do so even with the prospect of raising $400 million in new revenue and even with the urging of the state health commissioner and then-Gov. David Paterson.
That doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying for a soda tax — encouraging kids in particular to cut back on sugary beverages is not a bad goal at all, nor is raising funds that could be used to promote a healthier citizenry. But the more likely reality is that New York and communities will have to find ways to do something about poor nutrition and food deserts without the help of a soda tax.
Here’s one direction: Since last March, Capital District Community Gardens has been supplying nine convenience stores and markets with fresh produce under a five-year, $175,000-a-year grant from the state Health Department that also helps underwrite fitness programs. Veggie Mobile Sprout, as this program is called, delivers produce twice a week at wholesale prices, enabling urban stores in Albany and Schenectady to sell fresh food at supermarket rates and offer something better than their typical fare of often fattening and less nutritious processed food. The program’s goal is to become self-sustaining.
How many more ideas to promote healthy and affordable food choices are there that might perhaps benefit from some initial public investment or other support? Why not make identifying and nurturing those ideas part of the mission of local community development or economic development entities?
Funding for such programs would not be handouts; beyond improving nutrition and reducing obesity with a long-term eye toward reducing public health costs, they would help get greater value out of the public assistance that goes to people in low-income neighborhoods.
Sounds like a shopping cart full of public interest to us.