East Side Saint Paul Needs Fresh Food Choices!

Have you ever heard of a food desert?

I hadn't, though it turns out I've lived in one lots of different times.  And if you're living in the East Side, you're probably living in one now.

In a nutshell, a neighborhood is a food desert if the neighborhood is shown (by US census data) to be low income as well as not having easy access to healthy, nutritious food. Often this means there is no major grocery store around, or as the USDA defines it, within 1 mile of a grocery store.

To break it down a little bit differently, this can mean a few different things:

• There might be a corner store, but because there is no real competition in the area, the food is not affordably priced; 
• There might be fast food restaurants, but as we know, they a) are not grocery stores, b) tend to lack nutritious food, and c) get expensive fast when used as a major source of food for a family; and/or
• Much of the food available in these instances is very unhealthy - think foods with a lot of processed wheat, corn, soy, sugar, fats... and very little fresh, wholesome fruits and veggies.

Many people who live in low-income neighborhoods also have limitations on reliable transportation, making those sources of food difficult to get to - and even more difficult to get home from carrying groceries. 

One experience I had was after I had my first baby. I had no car, so I would put the baby in a stroller, walk to the grocery store, fill the pocket underneath with groceries (I could only fit two bags in there at a time, so I had to do this frequently), and walk home. That was all fine 'til I got home to my apartment building and I couldn't lift a stroller filled with a baby and heavy groceries all the way up the stairs... So I had to carry my baby upstairs, get her settled somewhere safely inside, and come back down to my food, hoping that no one stole it while I was away. This of course was only an option when it was nice out. As we all know, in Minnesota, those months when the weather allows for walking are uncommon.

This is only one story in the life of one person (well, two - can't forget the baby!). There are thousands of people in the East Side of Saint Paul with their own versions of this story. Some of you are even further from the store. Some of you are working two or three jobs and don't have time to walk to the store. Some of you use Metro Transit and know how difficult it is to try to get groceries home on the bus...then into a blizzard for the rest of the walk. Or 90+ degree weather and your food is melted by the time you get home. The list goes on. 

East Side Prosperity Campaign, along with many community partners, is working to making the East Side food desert into a thing of the past. One of the coolest things being worked on is help with community-level gardening. Imagine if you could walk to your community garden (or to one you've learned to make and plant yourself) and pick your own food - that you've chosen to plant, that you've used to teach your children about healthy food choices, and that you can be proud of! Or there's also the project for getting a farmer's market on the East Side - it doesn't get much fresher than that. Plus, many vendors at farmer's markets are able to accept WIC vouchers and/or SNAP benefits. 

Plus, if you join up with the ESPC and learn about how to grow your own veggies, you get to watch this:

grow into this:

But you don't HAVE to grow eggplant. You can grow whatever you want.

Join up with the ESPC and learn more about how to get involved with making your community, as they say, "An engaged, powerful, and equitable East Side."