But opening more food stores is not enough. People have to buy and eat those healthy foods. We need a grassroots-initiated food revolution. Old habits, ingrained food preferences, and food addictions are hard to break. Supermarkets on their own will not be successful in changing the eating habits of people who live in food deserts, so what else can we do? Well, we need to educate individuals about healthy choices and provide creative incentives for them to buy healthy foods. And education needs to target both children and adults.
For example, in New York City, the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene distributes “Health Bucks” that people can use to buy produce at all farmers’ markets in the city that accept food stamps. Participants receive one Health Buck coupon for every $5 they spend at farmers’ markets using food stamps. In other words, they get more food dollars if they spend what they have more wisely.
Clearly, we need to couple educational programs with financial incentives that encourage people to spend their food dollars wisely rather than buy fast food and junk food. This has begun to occur in some areas of the country. For example, seniors in New York City with yearly incomes of less than $30,000 can get vouchers that they can redeem at farm stands. Many farmers’ markets will help collect produce and take it to food banks and pantries at the end of the market day. Tax deductions also can play an important role to encourage donations of produce to feed the hungry. The Good Samaritan Hunger Relief Tax Incentive Program allows farmers and small business owners to receive a tax deduction for donating food to banks, pantries, and homeless shelters. Look at Seattle: in 2008, seven neighborhood farmers’ markets donated 40,343 pounds of produce to local food banks.
WORDS OF WISDOM FROM AKUA WOOLBRIGHT, PHD.:
We need an army of voices working with and within these communities to improve their health. Efforts have begun and it is starting to pay off, but it is a slow process that needs further innovation and support.
I have known nutritionist and educator Akua Woolbright for years, since she worked for Whole Foods Market on its healthy eating programs. We worked together to improve the health of Whole Foods Market team members and to set up educational initiatives for Whole Foods customers. Woolbright has a doctorate in nutritional sciences from Howard University. Today, she serves as the nutrition program director for the Let’s Talk Food initiative in Detroit, a program sponsored by the Whole Cities Foundation.
When Dr. Woolbright went to Detroit in 2012 to work in this low-income community, she hit the pavement running. That first year she spent most of her time taking our nutritional message to the community. She went to health care centers, church basement meetings, hair salons, senior citizen centers, mosques, high schools—any place that would allow her to introduce herself and speak on their turf. She went to two to three different church services on Sundays to meet people and speak to pastors, asking whether she could lecture on healthy eating and present healthy cooking classes. Her work has won a steady and growing following of enthusiastic people, and her experiences teaching people who live in low-income areas in Detroit offer keen insight into changing the health of our country. Her insights below, which she shared to be included here, are invaluable.
The biggest surprise to me that I learned in the years I have been working in Detroit is the incorrect perception coming from public-health and medical authorities and the universities, stating that this message of plant-based, superior nutrition cannot work in a place like Detroit and that black people in large urban communities will not be receptive to healthy eating. I was told, “You won’t make a difference, it is not worth the effort, and it is best just to prescribe medicine,” because “these people just won’t do it.” We should not be making these false assumptions of what people can and cannot do.
It is not my decision to decide what people can and cannot do; my job is to bring people the right information so they can decide what they want to do for themselves. And the response has been overwhelming, and people have been transforming their health.
It is my responsibility to present sound nutrition information. Period. As an African American nutritionist, I feel an even more pronounced responsibility to make sure this life-saving information reaches my community.
The second most important thing I have learned is that the language we use is often inadequate. Whether it’s New Orleans, Detroit, or Oakland, the people in these communities do NOT necessarily consider themselves underserved or disadvantaged and they may not like the term “food deserts.” It is important that community health professionals reach a deeper understanding of the communities they serve so that the messages and approaches they apply will be more appropriate and effective. I have seen that people across all demographics are willing to apply the nutrition information they receive to make bold lifestyle changes.
People living in neighborhoods across Detroit are working every day to make our neighborhoods better, and I am happy that I’ve had the opportunity to make contributions toward the health and wellness of the people who reside in this city.
A different vocabulary is needed to speak about these communities in a way that is uplifting and respectful, to acknowledge the good that is here, and to add to the good that is already happening. This helps the community see you as an equal partner, not as someone looking down from an ivory tower of superiority, but as someone who is willing to meet them where they are and walk the journey with them.
Every day I talk to members of the black community with different socioeconomic backgrounds, many of whom are living with some of the most serious health challenges and obstacles, and I work to help them get their lives back on track. Despite what some of my colleagues seem to think, this healthy eating message even works better in a community like this because folks have experienced and seen the negative effects of serious health conditions—the human tragedy that they are seeing with their own eyes every single day, so they are more ripe for a major nutritional overhaul. You don’t have to show them the statistics of ill health in this community; they see it every day with their own family, friends, and neighbors.
The people that come to my classes come back and share—“my night sweats are gone,” “I am sleeping through the night,” “my fatigue, joint pain, or my headaches are resolved.” This is only the first tier of results that people experience early. And they never thought their suffering with these symptoms was linked to food and diet. Of course their sinuses clear up, and chronic sore throats and indigestion go away. But then the second tier of results starts to come into play and their chronic diseases gradually resolve. They are able to first reduce and in most cases eliminate the need for medication for blood pressure, diabetes, and high cholesterol. At one meeting, a person stood up who lost 100 pounds; a couple chimed in that had lost 40 together—so many losing and really keeping it off, because they are maintaining the lifestyle they were taught. They learned to make a permanent change in the way they eat.
The beauty here is that this work is translatable to all these groups and populations; it crosses economic boundaries; it crosses race, cultural, and ethnic barriers. I am surprised that so much of what I learned in the university was wrong, and I found that cultural, ethnic, and racial differences were NOT an impediment to change—especially when [one is] given the opportunity to really spend time with and educate people properly. When [people were] given practical information and the lifesaving scientific information that supports it, so many were willing and able to change and not be helpless and frozen in their fast food habits.
I am talking to SNAP recipients; we have war veterans, single mothers, grandmothers, college students, government workers, auto industry professionals, office workers, and health educators who all attend my classes together, and that is the beauty of this movement—seeing the powerful interest that emanates across the entire spectrum. That has been the most important affirmation. If I had listened to the professionals in this field, I would have given up the first week. People everywhere and especially here want better for their families, and they want to enjo
y the best quality health and happiness they can earn.
I have found that health practitioners must push the envelope and request more significant changes from their clients and patients. We have to go beyond portion control and moderation, which is not working. We have to get bolder in our approaches and expect more from people; if we don’t believe it is possible, we are already lost. It starts with us, but it ends with people making positive changes in their lives.
Akua Woolbright’s wisdom and work are critical for the future health of this country. The evidence is clear that good information and healthy food availability make a real difference in the lives of people in impoverished communities.
VOICES FOR HEALTHY KIDS
Voices for Healthy Kids is a joint initiative of the American Heart Association and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation working to engage, organize, and mobilize people to improve the health of their communities and to help all children grow up at a healthy weight. Voices for Healthy Kids is dedicated to improving access to affordable healthy foods for children and families. They work to increase the number of healthy food outlets, grocery stores, supermarkets, and farmers’ markets in underserved communities by increasing governmental support for financing initiatives.27
They are working on behalf of more than 1 million people in Alabama—including a half-million children—that live in areas without easy access to fresh and healthy food. That places Alabama among the top ten states in the nation in terms of a lack of access to healthy foods. But a group of health advocates under the leadership of Voices for Alabama’s Children is working to change those statistics by creating a healthy foods access fund. The state-based program would establish a revolving-loan program that would provide financial incentives to grocers and other food retailers to locate their businesses in communities that have low or no access to healthy foods. Voices for Healthy Kids has also launched healthy food access initiatives in Texas, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Ohio.28
The food and beverages and chain restaurant industries target children with intensive marketing.
In 2010, the food and beverages industry spent $40 billion lobbying Congress against regulations that would decrease the marketing of unhealthy food to kids and promote soda taxes. The fast food industry spends more than $5 million a day advertising sugary cereals, junk food, and fast food to children; and it’s working.29 It has been demonstrated that exposure to these advertisements induces children to eat higher amounts of sugar, fried food, and sweetened beverages. Advertising brain-damaging foods to children is no better than advertising cigarettes, alcohol, and addictive drugs to them. It’s hard enough for parents to get their children to eat vegetables, but once they are hooked on commercial baked goods and sweets, it is, as we have seen, even more difficult.
Animals of all species will choose highly flavored, processed foods over real food and become highly addicted, obese, and sick when exposed to these food choices. In fact, animals will stop eating the produce they are habituated to eating in their natural environments and only consume calorically concentrated, highly flavored junk food when given the opportunity. Their palates and their brains can be captured to prefer high-tech, designer foods. Human children are no different. They don’t like fruits and vegetables because their taste has been deadened and hijacked by highly palatable processed foods.
Of course, parents are ultimately responsible for what their children eat, but until communities and school systems prohibit these dangerous foods in public places, even well-intentioned parents become conflicted with societal pressures to conform to the dangerous eating practices placed on their children. Schools have to make clear that bringing cupcakes, doughnuts, cookies, and other junk food into school for parties, birthdays, and even for regular cafeteria consumption is not permitted. It’s time to stand up to the big food companies and protect the health of our children. Advertising sweetened, processed foods to children is just not acceptable.
THE PROBLEM OF FOOD SUBSIDIES AND COSTS
Policy changes are needed; agricultural subsidies foster poor health. For more than eighty years, U.S. farmers have been the beneficiaries of a medley of subsidies and price-support programs to elevate and stabilize crop prices and keep fields productive. Critics and scientists say these policies have led to more obesity and disease by favoring the production of only corn, wheat, and soybeans. These crops are for feeding livestock rather than people and for use as sweeteners and additives in processed foods. These policies are now entrenched in America’s heartland. They keep the foods fed to cows and pigs cheap and reduce the consumer costs of dairy and meat, thus keeping sugary, corn syrup–flavored fast foods cheap too, as well as corn oil, HFCS, soybean oil, and white flour. These policies primarily benefit huge agricultural corporations, fast food giants, and processed food manufacturers, not the family farm trying to grow fresh fruits and vegetables. While the overall price of fruits and vegetables in the United States increased by nearly 75 percent between 1989 and 2005, the price of junk food dropped by more than 26 percent during the same period.30
Food subsidies are one reason that the cheapest, unhealthiest, and most fattening fast foods are the most available foods in poor neighborhoods. Inexpensive, dangerous, and addictive foods have become the staple of an overweight and sickly population that faces an explosion of medical difficulties and medical costs. And these cheap foods do not come cheap—they burden a stressed population with tragic medical difficulties and unaffordable medical expenses.
If the United States is going to subsidize agriculture, it should at least subsidize healthy foods, not unhealthy ones. Rather than subsidize sugar, corn syrup, and beef, we should subsidize mushrooms, walnuts, almonds, broccoli, and bok choy. Subsidizing fruit and vegetable growers instead of commercial corn, dairy, and beef concerns would do a lot toward making our population healthier. It may not make a huge difference in the price of corn syrup liquid drinks at fast food outlets, but it would encourage large growers to think more about farming diversity and growing options. And, it would be a factor in educating our population about the value of fresh produce.
The fact that fresh fruits and vegetables are more expensive than processed snacks is perceived to be a major impediment to eating healthy food for many, particularly lower income, families. This is an issue that the USDA has studied. Hayden Stewart, an agricultural economist with the USDA’s Economic Research Service, says that the USDA wanted to answer the question of how much it costs someone to meet fruit and vegetable recommendations. Her group found that an adult on a 2,000-calorie-per-day diet could satisfy recommendations for vegetable and fruit consumption in the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans at an average cost of $2.00 to $2.50 per day, or approximately 50 cents per edible cup equivalent.31 Stewart and colleagues also looked at costs associated with swapping out snack foods for fruits and vegetables and found that swapping is, at least, cost neutral.
Certainly, if a family cuts out fast food and processed food from their diet and spends those dollars sensibly on produce, they can eat healthfully with little extra cost, but those are acquired skills that Americans need to learn. And don’t forget to factor in the costs of illness, chronic disease, excessive medical expenditures, and reduced work capacity that result from poor eating habits. The American College of Cardiology estimates that $22 billion in needless and excessive medical costs and $9 billion in lost productivity are related to improper eating in this country.32
We can see that efforts are under way to improve the way Americans eat, and this is happening near to me in Camden. The New Jersey Partnership for Healthy Kids launched a Get Healthy Camden initiative, and a Camden Food Innovation Grant Fund was started. But we need to do much more because we have passed the tipping point of danger. We need better nutritional guidance, and we need millions of new adult role models of healthy eating. Adults have to model healthy eating behaviors and get rid of fast food in their diets before they can expect kids to do the same. The efforts to promote the consumption o
f vegetables, beans, fruits, nuts, and seeds need to involve citywide agencies, joined by all areas of political and social influence, with heathy eating promoted in hospitals, medical clinics, and all public places. We need an integrated effort that involves celebrities and influential athletes promoting the consumption of fresh fruits, vegetables, beans, seeds, and nuts. Health professionals have to walk the walk and talk the talk. For instance, we can’t continue to allow fast food restaurants in hospitals. Hospitals and public health facilities must remove white flour, pancakes, waffles, and other junk food from their menus. Every pebble of influence needs to come together to start and maintain an avalanche of good.
Imagine if we transformed America’s inner cities into zones of excellent nutrition that grow healthy bodies and healthy minds. Instead of food deserts, they could be hotbeds of creativity and business opportunity; they could be transformed into Blue Zones of slim, healthy people living well and long, and being proud of their accomplishments. Improvements have already begun to happen in some areas of the country. With many people working purposefully together, we can stop fast food genocide.
CHAPTER SEVEN
FOOD FOR THE HEART AND SOUL
So far, this book has explored how a fast food genocide is destroying lives. We have examined food addiction, our brains on fast food, the historical legacy of ignoring poor nutrition, toxic hunger, food deserts, and several impressive organizations that are trying to help stop the vicious cycle of food inequality. The question now becomes: How do we start making the necessary dietary changes in our own lives? We cannot sit back and let disastrous dietary choices destroy our families, friends, and communities. In this chapter, I lay out the foundational components of a Nutritarian diet. This information will arm you for moving forward with a life-changing new perspective on how to eat. Millions of individuals have discovered these principals and regained their health and vitality. The movement, however, is just beginning. We can win the battle against processed foods once and for all, but it has to start with you!
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