Making Healthy Food Available to All
For more than 20 years, The Food Trust has been working to ensure that everyone has access to affordable, nutritious food.
If you have a grocery store selling fresh, affordable, high-quality produce in your neighborhood, you might wonder why this issue so vital, but the 29.7 million Americans who live more than a mile from the nearest supermarket don’t have to wonder. They struggle to feed their families healthy foods – travelling great distances to the nearest supermarket, paying higher prices for lower-quality food at corner stores and suffering from higher rates of obesity and other chronic diet-related diseases.
It doesn't have to be that way. Together, we can improve food access and give everyone the information they need to make healthy choices.
From Executive Director Yael Lehmann
An Urgent Problem, A Comprehensive Solution
Too often when we talk about this nation's obesity crisis, we talk about it as an overwhelming, seemingly unsolvable problem. With one in three American children overweight or obese, the issue is an urgent one, but as one American city is showing us, a solution is possible.
A study published recently in Preventing Chronic Disease shows that Philadelphia may have found the key to solving this national issue: The city has significantly reduced the rate of obesity among Philadelphia schoolchildren.
This news means that Philadelphia children will lead healthier lives – and that all those across the country engaged in multiple strategies to reverse our dangerous and expensive obesity problem are on the right track.
Notably, the study doesn't credit one program or policy as the hero of this success story. Instead, it suggests that Philadelphia's comprehensive approach to obesity prevention – a combination of increased access to healthy food, nutrition education and exercise – may be responsible for the reversing the obesity trend.
