Stores Listen to Latino Customers And Add Healthier Snacks to Check-outs

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Cardenas, an Ontario-based grocery chain in Riverside County (47.9% Latino) that markets it’s products to Latino shoppers, are now changing their store’s checkouts, offering healthier snacks after listening to shoppers like Alejandra Padilla.

Why?

Padilla, a Latina mom of three, wants the checkouts to be filled with healthy convenient options like apple slices, nuts, trail mix and water, as many times she must deal with their kids wanting the unhealthy candy and soda’s displayed at checkouts, she explained to Press Enterprise.

Latinos are often more at risk for health problems like Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and other diet-related diseases the American Heart Association reports, but encouraging healthier foods, may help play a part in decreasing diet-related health risks.

A local Riverside County report from 2014 revealed that 75% of Latinos were overweight or obese, but health officials of the county  are looking to decrease these health risks by implementing healthier food marketing in grocers, and local corner stores.

Placing healthier foods at eye levels, at the ends of aisles and in more prominent places like checkout, are part of the new movement to help encourage nutrition education and obesity prevention, Valerie Comeaux coordinator for the Riverside University Health System, told Press Enterprise.

Riverside’s public health officials are working with stores like Cardenas and other retailers, launching a Healthy Aisle Initiatives and offering nutrition booths and signs, free fruit and veggie fests, cookbooks and free cooking demos for in-store shoppers to explore healthier foods.

The work may be somewhat of a challenge for county officials faced with competitive candy vendors, but there has been a success in guiding people towards fresh fruits and vegetables in mom-and-pop markets in Riverside’s Eastside, where signs, murals, and improved refrigeration systems have helped keep the produce fresh longer and keep shoppers noticing the healthy options.

Healthier food marketing can be as simple as putting an apple at eye level, or an arrow on the ground. So now this question remains-How will your store offer healthier foods?

To find out more about the need for better foods for Latino neighborhoods, and access to healthier foods, click here.