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Eating healthy: Supermarkets vital: Front Burner

For nearly 30 million families, the trial of healthy eating goes beyond bribing kids to eat their broccoli. These clans live in food deserts — areas short of stores where nutritious, fresh food is sold.

Florida isn't immune.

Brian Lang, who directs the national campaign for Healthy Food Access at The Food Trust, which works to provide all access to affordable, nutritious food, has been working locally with the American Heart Association's Voices for Healthy Kids program.

He discussed the issue with editorial-writer Darryl E. Owens. An edited transcript follows.

Q: Tell us more about food deserts.

A: It's a community with few places where you can purchase fresh and healthy foods, where it's easy to find grape soda, but considerably harder to find a bunch of grapes. Food deserts are a problem for low-income families in many urban communities, where they're less likely to have a car and might have to take a few bus lines to do their food shopping, and in rural areas, where people might live more than 10 or 20 miles from the closest grocery store.

Q: What accounts for Florida's food deserts?

A: A host of reasons, including an increase in the average size of supermarkets, and the hollowing out of many urban and rural communities from the '70s through the present. Today, some of the challenges of building and operating a new store in a food desert include high insurance costs, increased labor training expenses, and a range of other barriers that grocers have to overcome.

Q: In some places in Florida, it's easier to find liquor than fresh fruit. How many Floridians live in poor communities with no supermarket access? How pernicious is the problem in Central Florida?

A: According to the USDA, almost 1.25 million Floridians have low income and low access to a grocery store. About 265,000 of those folks live in Central Florida. That's enough to support quite a few new stores.

Q: What are the consequences of food deserts?

A: When they can't get to the grocery store, people eat fewer fruits and vegetables, and they're more likely to be in poor health. Addressing the issue is something to consider in Florida, where more than 25 percent of the population is obese. There are economic impacts, too. The grocery store is the heart of a lot of small towns, and if those stores go out of business, it's bad news for the town. In many urban areas, grocery stores are the anchor of a shopping center that might provide an array of goods and services to people. Supermarkets put a lot of people to work, too, and food deserts are often places with high unemployment.

Q: What role does the Florida Legislature play in alleviating this problem?

A: An important one; both the state of Florida and the Legislature can use economic development policy to bring new and improved supermarkets to communities that need more healthy food. A number of states have created healthy-food financing programs that provide incentives to grocers who want to build and expand their stores in food deserts. The biggest one was started in Pennsylvania in 2004, and since then, it's supported almost 90 new and expanded stores that now serve over 400,000 people. Ten years later, after a one-time public investment, those stores are thriving.

There seems to be some genuine interest in doing something comparable in Florida, and based on what I've seen and heard so far, I'd give Florida's legislators a "B" [for their effort].

Q: How can we best address the issue?

A: By bringing together people from a variety of sectors who are concerned about the problem — from the grocery business to public health — to take a look at the issue in Florida and develop a response comparable to what others states have done. It's good business for the grocers, smart public policy for the state, and could mean healthy food a lot closer to home for the 1.25 million Floridians living in food deserts.

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