Obama Administration Launches Healthy Food Financing Initiat
First Lady Michelle Obama hit the nail on the head when she said: “We all know the numbers; one in three of America’s kids are overweight or obese. And they didn’t get that way by themselves.” A number of factors have contributed, including habits and patterns in family life and community infrastructures that deter physical activity and increase the consumption of processed or fast foods. And although obesity among children and young people stretches beyond socioeconomic borders, poorer communities are often the hardest hit. These low-income areas, often referred to as “food deserts,” are typically populated with fast food restaurants and convenience stores that offer little or no healthy food choices—a situation the Obama administration hopes to rectify with its Healthy Food Financing Initiative.
The $400 million a year initiative, launched in Philadelphia on Friday by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, aims to expand access to fresh, healthy food to all underserved urban and rural communities across the country within seven years, creating jobs in the process. “The Healthy Food Financing Initiative will enhance access to healthy and affordable choices in struggling urban and rural communities, create jobs and economic development, and establish market opportunities for farmers and ranchers,” Vilsack said, noting that the effort is a “critically important step” toward the First Lady’s goal of solving the childhood obesity epidemic within a generation by not only making healthy foods more affordable and accessible for families, but increasing understanding of nutrition, improving the quality of food in schools, and promoting exercise.
Secretary Geithner explained that the program, a partnership between the U.S. Departments of Treasury, Agriculture and Health and Human Services, will be a mixture of $250 million in tax credits to encourage food retailers to build grocery stores in poor communities and some $150 million in low-rate loans and grants to help smaller outlets like convenience stores and bodegas carry healthier food options. The USDA has created a Food Atlas, which shows where the underserved communities are located. “It’s been a tough year for America, but for our middle class and distressed communities it’s been a tough decade,” Geithner said. “We’re here to make sure that in America, where a child grows up doesn’t determine whether they have access to a better, healthier future. By introducing powerful incentives for private investors to take a chance on projects, like a new, healthier grocery store, we can make that difference for America’s children, while creating new jobs and services in their communities.”
Also attending the launch ceremony was First Lady Obama, who took time to tour a North Philadelphia grocery store set up through a state initiative similar to the Obama plan in a community that had no supermarket for more than ten years. “If you can do it here, we can do it around the country,” she said. Mrs. Obama praised the Pennsylvania program, saying that it has succeeded in giving about 400,000 people access to healthy food while creating some 5,000 jobs.
On Saturday, the First Lady made a rare appearance at the annual winter meeting of the National Governors Association where she appealed to the nation’s governors to join in her initiative to reduce childhood obesity. “Let’s stop wringing our hands and talking about it and citing statistics,” she said. “Let’s act. Let’s move. Let’s give our kids the future they deserve.”
Government statistics show that an estimated 23.5 million people, including 6.5 million children, live in low-income areas where they are more than a mile from a grocery store. Of the 23.5 million, 11.5 million are low-income individuals in households with incomes at or below 200 percent of the poverty line.
