Our Nutrition

Nutrition

There are so many different things that influence and contribute to our society's nutrition. Whether we are aware of it or not, our eating habits are strongly impacted by the different people and structures around us. This blog post explores the following different areas of nutrition: how our communities and surroundings affect us, local grocery stores vs. fast food, and how teaching kids early in school about healthy foods can really benefit them.

Zoning

Zoning is the use of commercial or residential land of a district mandated by the local government or county. The varying degrees of zoning laws in different communities plays a crucial role in the overall health of a community. Through a combination of incentive and exclusionary zoning, low-income and minority communities have systematically isolated which has caused disparities in health between class and racial lines. As a result the health of these communities has deteriorated. Incentive zoning promotes development by making a district attractive to businesses through tax breaks and deregulation of environmental laws. Exclusionary zoning maintains housing prices high, which eventually leads to segregation of communities.

The lack of strong zoning codes in low-income and minority communities can lead to a higher prevalence of liquor, gun, and fast food stores in these communities, all of which have detrimental health impacts on residents. For example, according to a study in West Oakland, which is, “ home to predominately people of color contains one liquor store for every 298, while largely white neighborhood of Piedmont has one liquor store for every 3,000 residents”. Low-income and minority communities suffer disproportionately from obesity caused by fast food restaurants and lack of access to healthy food and high crime rates due to high consumption of alcohol.

Local Groceries

You can find nutritious foods in many grocery stores, however not every community has access to a super markets where they can get good food. As we all know eating fast food regularly is far worse for your body and health than if you were to eat fruits and vegetables from your local supermarket. Many communities eat  unhealthy because they do not have a local supermarket, it is cheaper for low-income families to eat fast food, or people in the community are not educated on what good nutrition looks like. Projects to build supermarkets in new areas are becoming more successful, and in doing so researchers are seeing a substantial increase in the communities fruit and vegetable intake. If we continue is bring grocery stores and supermarkets to lacking communities we will see a rise in their health because they will not need to rely as much on fast food industries.

School Lunches

The US Department of Agriculture runs a federally assisted meal program called the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) that is currently operating in 100,00+ schools and childcare institutions across America (USDA, 2013). It provides low-cost or free lunches that meet federal meal requirements to over 31 million children every day. Along with food assistance, NSLP runs smaller programs such as Farm to School an initiative that connects students to their local farmers and teaches them where their food comes from (National School Lunch Program [NSLP], 2013). 

The Farm to School initiative lead to 43% of public school districts across the country reporting an existing farm to school program in place with another 13% committed to launch a similar program(NSLP,2013). Over $350 million worth of local food was purchased by participating schools in 2011-2012. In other terms, thats $350 million kept in our economy stimulating small enterprises(NSLP, 2013). Farm to School's success is an example of public health at the upstream and downstream approaches. Not only are the downstream children being fed but they are also learning proper eating habits, gaining enough food to deter malnutrition related illness, and having a sense of comfort they will not go hungry all leading to better health over all. 

Overall, there are numerous aspects of nutrition that affect our health as both a person and a community, these things such as zoning, school lunches, and fast food compared to supermarkets are just a few important topics regarding nutrition in a community.