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By Alexa11221 | December 19, 2007
1. Supposedly the MTA is going to take the extra money they get from raising the price for unlimited Metrocards (and introducing a new 14 day card) and use it to improve service on certain lines, including the G train. YAY!
But, they said it wouldn’t be until March (2nd quarter) because they wouldn’t know until then if the fare hikes would actually supply enough money. BOO!
Let’s not get me started on the MTA right now …
2. The Mayor said they are going to issue additional pushcart licenses to vendors who will sell fresh fruits and vegetables in neighborhoods that lack adequate access to healthy foods. YAY! He was quoted as saying (I’m doing this from memory so this is more like paraphrasing than actually quoting) that last year the city tried to get bodega owners to sell more healthy food, but weren’t successful except that now many more of them carry low-fat and skim milk. They realized it was a logistical issue (basically, bodegas aren’t really set up to sell fresh foods and don’t want to invest in the refrigeration facilities) and thought the the pushcart vendors would be a better solution.
Bed-Stuy is one of the neighborhoods targeted to get more of these licenses. I just hope this doesn’t mean that there will be 50 fruit and vegetable carts on Fulton during the work week and not one to be seen north of there or on the weekends or after work.
December 19th, 2007 at 8:10 am
I heard about the fruit cart plan on the news yesterday. It sounded like you could get a subsidy for opening up a regular produce store, too, which would be great.
Lots of new folks coming into the neighborhood, rents are still cheap, storefronts are available… seems like a great time for a produce store on just about every corner.
December 19th, 2007 at 10:06 am
I think the fruit carts would be a wonderful idea, especially now that the Bed-Stuy CSA’s season is over.
December 19th, 2007 at 10:27 am
the fruit carts are a great idea… but i’m really hoping for some improvements in the vegetable area as well. my repeated talks to the manager of key food do not seem to be working!
also, i DID find a good fruit and vegetable place on fulton between nostrand and bedford. chung’s, i believe it’s called. it’s like a mini korean green market. so far it’s the best i’ve come across.
December 19th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
What really is the issue here? Is it that we are trying to improve the health of people in impoverished communities? If so, then we have to address access AND education.
Access – The plan that you mention seems to address this part of the problem, provided that they have fruit/vegetable carts throughout the neighborhood at decent times (rather than just on Fulton from 9 to 5, as you mentioned). But the problem is not just about access, it’s about education and self-efficacy. I can’t help but think that even if there were a fruit cart on every corner of Bed-Stuy that it would only get a few people to begin eating more healthily. This improved access to healthy foods would be wonderful for those of us in the neighborhood who are already stopping to pick up these foods on the way home from work or those of us who make trips outside of Bed-Stuy to get our fruit/veggie fix, but will it really increase the number of people in Bed-Stuy who have a healthy diet?
Education – We have to do a better job educating children about diet and health. The problem with this is that even with the proper education about appropriate dietary choices, young children are not equipped to put what they’ve learned into action because they are not the ones making food choices in their household. It’s the parents who make these choices and I often see them making the wrong ones. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a mom giving her child the standard bodega breakfast: a pack of Cheez Doodles and one of those little bottles of knock-off Kool-Aid. And this child is supposed to perform well in school after eating this breakfast of champions?
In addition to the education, there has to be some sense of self-efficacy on the part of the individual. Some people know what they need to eat to have a healthy diet, but they don’t believe that they have the power to make a dietary change. Not only to we have to educate people so that they know they need to change certain behaviors, we’ve got to find ways to help folks feel more secure in their ability to change these behaviors.
Access and education still won’t help everyone, so I strongly believe that we need to have a fried food/Twinkie tax. Only then will we be able to actually improve health in impoverished communities. All fried, high fat, and high sugar foods and drinks should be taxed heavily, because when you think about it, the food selection made by low SES people is not illogical. Try eating 99 cents worth of oranges and have your friend eat a whole 99 cent bag of Utz potato chips. Check your appetites in an hour. Guess which one of you will be hungry? It’s so obvious that foods that are high in fat will make you satiated for a longer period of time, so the fact that people on limited budgets are more likely to eat high fats foods should come as no surprise. It shouldn’t make financial sense to purchase low quality food. I’m sure some of you think that the food someone eats is no one’s business but their own, but the truth is that when low SES people get sick and go to the hospital, they use Medicaid, so we all pay, and therefore it is our business. Sorry, but you should have to pay for the privilege to eat poorly.
December 19th, 2007 at 1:22 pm
Paying for the privilege to eat poorly seems like a noble way to go about things… but I think it’s more complicated than that, and that this could wind up being a highly regressive tax on poor people for, well, being poor.
Take cigarettes. Taxing the crap out of cigarettes keeps people who feel like they can make choices from smoking. It was the thing that finally got me to quit. But a really high price on cigarettes doesn’t keep really poor people from smoking. It makes smoking even more destructive for poor people, but it doesn’t make smoking stop, because there is a fatalism to being poor that your ideas don’t really take into account.
When you work two jobs and are still in the hole, why *not* smoke? Why not eat delicious, fattening, salty-sweet deep fried foods? Cooking is work, and these things are relatively inexpensive treats that don’t involve work, and when you work hard all day and all night, there is a sense that they’re earned.
Right now many of the worst prepared foods (like the Bodega Breakfast) are cheaper than anything healthy you can buy, and that shouldn’t be the case. But a tax on these foods is bound to backfire.
December 19th, 2007 at 2:13 pm
A lot of what makes cheap food cheap are the decisions made at the federal level about what food growers and industries to subsidize. One of the most (if not THE most, forgive me for my partial knowledge here) subsidized food products in the U.S. is corn, which may seem benign enough until you realize that it is an essential ingredient of most fast food and ALL soda, and is also used as feed for factory-farmed animals. There was talk this year of retooling the Farm Bill to make fresh produce more affordable through subsidies, I don’t know what the result was but apparently the Farm Bill is one of the key legislative tools that determines who eats what (it establishes many of the federal food assistance guidelines), and influences the lives of city dwellers far more than we realize.
December 19th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
Deb: I don’t beleive all poor people are fatalistic - though I think there is a strong connection, at least in our neighborhood.
I work long hours and I know that my food choices can be horrible at times but I can have a piece of fruit and/or several kinds of veggies without having to cook a thing. I can eat a can of beans out of the can. It is healthier than some fried food and I don’t even have to wash a plate. Even tap water, which is readily available and extremely inexpensive, is a better option than a soda.
Fatty fried foods seem to me to be more of a way to stuff an emotion down than as a truly effective way to satiate your hunger.
Taxing the unhealthy foods would actually help to reflect the true cost of eating such options. Obesity, diabetes, heart disease, etc are the results of - among other things - a poor diet. Addressing these health issues costs a great deal of money, only some of which is actually borne by the sufferer if they are poor. If the true cost of such foods is reflected at the cash register, then maybe people will automatically gravitate towards healthier foods.
The problem is our lack of access to healthier options in the neighborhood. Anything that promotes healthier options through out the entire neighborhood should be encouraged and we, as beneficiaries of this current effort, need to support it by buying and eating healthier foods.
That said, parents need to take the lead and show their children, in words and deeds, that there are healthier options that are worth the effort to find and enjoy.
December 20th, 2007 at 10:10 am
FYI on the tap water: not only is it better for you than soda, it is more stringently regulated than bottled water, and especially here in nyc the quality is very high. i hate seeing people, especially families, spending extra money unnecessarily on bottled water, thinking it is healthier. it’s not.
small part of solution to big problem cited here: get a filter and a refillable bottle, tell dasani (aka coca cola) to step off, and use the sizable sums of money saved to buy better food.
December 20th, 2007 at 11:33 am
@ Deb: While I do think that low SES people are more likely than others to be fatalistic (I think it is a byproduct of their strong religious beliefs), that doesn’t mean that we all have to agree with their line of thinking and give up on them. Just because they don’t think that they can change their health fate (psychologists would call this low self-efficacy), it doesn’t mean that we should ignore their smoking, drinking, and overindulgence in junk food 7 days a week.
“When you work two jobs and are still in the hole, why *not* smoke? Why not eat delicious, fattening, salty-sweet deep fried foods?”
Because if you work 2 jobs and are in the hole then the last thing that you should do is mess your life up even more by ruining your health.
I agree with Newbie2, these junky-junk foods should be taxed to reflect the true cost to the individual and to society.
San Francisco’s mayor has the right idea, but it doesn’t go far enough:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/18/us/18soda.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
December 20th, 2007 at 11:51 am
i want a subsidy for buying V8!
i’m surprised san francisco hasn’t already implemented serious junk-food laws, after all they’re the home of the Twinkie Defense.
December 20th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
Ugh, that Twinkie Defense. That was just a move to justify homophobia.
December 20th, 2007 at 12:56 pm
Right now junk food is subsidized by the farm lobby, and that is wrong, it creates bad choices. A bag of Utz potato chips should *not* cost a quarter, nor should purple and orange drink. But a high, cigarette-like tax on bad food is paternalistic, and could actually turn into a tool of self-oppression for many individuals. That’s all I’m saying.
I think the Bloomberg administration generally uses paternalism well. I think it’s great to ban trans fats in the city. I think it’s great to subsidize *good* food and create opportunities for fruit and vegetable sellers. I think it’s great that I don’t have health insurance, but am signed up at Bellevue to get decent, lowcost health care that is subsidized by the city.
Promoting the positive, offering choices, banning actual poisons! These are strong paternalistic cues that the Bloomberg administration is giving us about our health. A tax sends a different message than these acts–it’s a different gesture. A tax says “go ahead, kill yourself. We’ll benefit from the money you spend doing it.” This message is not lost on hardcore defeatists, who don’t need any more evidence that the world is stacked against them, JMHO.