Driving home from work, Tanya Pickle navigated intersections defined by fast food restaurants: KFCs, Wendy’s, McDonald’s and convenience stores featuring hot takeout counters steaming with the Southern staples of fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, collard greens and beans.
The junk food accosting Pickle on her daily commute may not seem like a big deal. But a recent study by the Food Trust, a food issues research group, suggests that a community’s access to a grocery store determines its residents’ health, and, ultimately, the cost society pays in medical care.
The African-American population in the small Midtown area of St. Petersburg, Fla., is seven times higher than the United States’ and four times higher than the city’s.
The concentration of fast food in Midtown is dangerous because heart disease is the No. 1 killer of African-Americans, according to the American Heart Association. Diabetes is twice as prevalent in blacks as in whites, according to the American Diabetes Association. Both of these diseases can often be prevented with a healthy diet and exercise.
Pickle, 30, used to drive at least 3 miles to reach a supermarket in search of healthier and cheaper options to feed her two sons. The November 2005 opening of the Sweetbay Supermarket, at the corner of 22nd Street and 18th Avenue South, changed that. Now Pickle only has to drive two blocks for fresh fruits and vegetables.
“That’s definitely completed my vision of a home,” she says. “I don’t have to go miles anymore to just pick up one thing.”
With the store’s opening, residents gained something often missing in lower-income urban neighborhoods: a healthier choice.
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Midtown spans 5.51 square miles of St. Petersburg between 2nd Avenue North and 30th Avenue South to the north and south and 4th Street and 34th Street to the east and west.
Fast food restaurants, which dominate the landscape in Midtown, are notorious for deep fried food with higher fat, sugar and salt content than most home-prepared meals, creating particularly dangerous food choices for the 84 percent African-American Midtown community.
But smart eating requires options and money, researchers say. The expensive corner stores are not affordable when it comes to weekly grocery trips. The median income in Midtown is $19,277, according to a city study. That’s $17,500 less than the median income for rest of the city.
Until Sweetbay opened last year, residents had to travel miles to get groceries.
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The laughter of lifelong friends Delphene Lambert, 38, and Melody Moorer, 38, echo through the aisles of Sweetbay. Lambert, a family support worker, pushes the cart as Moorer, a middle school teacher, tosses in the groceries their families need. The duo is dressed in sports clothes. They always try to walk when they finish work. Lambert’s white T-shirt proclaims, “Step up Florida! On our way to healthy living.”
They both are stepping up, trying to lose weight and stay in shape. They’ve each lost too many family members to heart disease and diabetes, they say.
Lambert, who lives at 27th Street and 17th Avenue, says she now travels under a mile to get to Sweetbay but she will drive farther for sales. No matter where she is shopping her cart fills up with fruits, vegetables, green tea, bottles of water and Wheat Thins.
“Healthy eating is a concern with me. My grandmother was a diabetic and so was one of my mom’s sisters. My other grandmother died of a heart attack,” she says, “High blood pressure runs in my family, so I try to walk every day for exercise.”
Lambert says she has to often battle her 10-year-old son over what he wants to eat.
“He sees all of those commercials advertising the different kinds of cereal, chips and cookies,” she explains. “That’s what he wants to eat.”
Moorer, who lives on 23rd Street, says health is a concern for her but her motivation has been much simpler.
“I just have to take my clothes off and look in the mirror!” she chuckles.
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Midtown’s lack of food access isn’t unique. A University of Connecticut study of the distribution of supermarkets in 30 metropolitan areas determined poor neighborhoods had almost 30 percent fewer stores than wealthy neighborhoods.
This lack of access is worsened by transportation difficulties. Pickle considers herself lucky to have her own car, unlike many of her friends. Before Sweetbay opened, she says friends paid $15 for a cab ride to get groceries home from full service stores or juggled bags and children on the buses.
“Now they can walk to the store,” Pickle says. “This store gives a lot of people independence.”
Pickle’s time and health no longer have to be dictated by geographic boundaries. She can wheel her grocery cart back to the store, start the ignition and turn into her driveway within minutes. It may not seem like much, but to her it could be life or death.
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