Research: Latino Neighborhoods Badly Need Healthier, Affordable Food Options

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Latino neighborhoods tend to have more fast-food restaurants and snack vendors and fewer supermarkets and farmers’ markets.

This makes it hard for Latino families do not have access to healthy, affordable foods.

However, policies that introduce supermarkets or farmers’ markets in Latino communities, expand healthy offerings in corner stores like bodegas, or reduce costs of healthy foods can improve Latino families’ access to and purchase of healthier foods and set the stage for better diets, according to a new package of research materials from Salud America! The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Research Network to Prevent Obesity Among Latino Children.

The “Better Food in the Neighborhood” package highlights how healthy food financing initiatives—tax credits, zoning incentives, funding, technical assistance, or equipment—can spur supermarkets and farmers’ markets to locate in underserved areas.

In addition, several government financing initiatives encourage bodegas to expand their offerings of healthy affordable foods.

Other financing initiatives include food subsidies to expand demand and purchasing power for healthy foods by low-income consumers.

“As the number of supermarkets in Latino neighborhoods increased—which expands the availability of affordable fresh fruits and vegetables, whole-grain products, low-fat milk, etc.—youths’ body weight outcomes improved,” said Amelie G. Ramirez, director of Salud America!, based at the Institute for Health Promotion Research at the UT Health Science Center at San Antonio.

The new research package can be found at www.salud-america.org and includes:

• A research review with the latest science on the U.S. Latino food environment;
• An issue brief (lay summary of the review);
• A colorful infographic; and
• An animated video

Be sure to check out all six new research material packages to be released over the summer by Salud America! each focused on a specific topic.

“Healthier School Snacks” is already available.

Also coming soon: Active Spaces (June 2013); Active Play (July 2013); Healthier Marketing (June 2013); and Sugary Drinks (August 2013).