Obama's Healthy Food Initiative

by Cameron Scott · 2010-02-04 12:07:00 UTC
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It's easy to forget in all of our talk about healthier food choices that some people aren't really making choices at all: Imagine that you're poor and live in a bad part of town. Liquor stores dot every block, but how far do you have to go before you can find a full-service grocery store — you know, one that carries produce and other fresh foods?

If you don't have a car or a good mass transit network — which you probably don't if you live in this particular part of town — it may simply be too hard for you to get fresh food. Ever.

Fortunately, this is a problem that can be solved by giving small businesses and even chain groceries incentives to establish or expand their operations in the parts of town economic opportunity forgot.

A Pennsylvania program provided $30 million in government seed money and got $165 million in private investments along with 78 new or improved grocery stores serving 400,000 people. The program also created almost 5,000 jobs.

And President Obama's recently released 2011 budget proposal includes funding for a national version of this program, called the Healthy Food Financing Initiative.

If fully funded, the program would result 2,000 healthy food retail outlets serving more than 15 million Americans and the creation of nearly 200,000 new jobs. 

Ultimately, it might even save money by improving health outcomes. It will be a slam dunk for the basketballer-in-chief, if only he can get by an tenacious GOP defense.

Photo credit: Diego Cupolo

Cameron Scott writes The Thin Green Line blog at SFGate (San Francisco Chronicle).
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