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Central Valley Disconnect: Rich Land, Poor Nutrition

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  • Central Valley Disconnect: Rich Land, Poor Nutrition

    CENTRAL VALLEY DISCONNECT: RICH LAND, POOR NUTRITION

    NPR
    Morning Edition
    July 10, 2009

    California's Central Valley produces many of the fruits and vegetables
    consumed in America. It is also one of the poorest areas of the
    country. There are high rates of malnutrition and obesity, and
    residents have little access to fresh produce themselves.

    Environmental conditions such as a lack of sidewalks and streetlights,
    and packs of wild dogs that keep parents from letting their children
    go outside to play, discourage exercise and healthy living. Constant
    gang violence and drugs hamper the efforts of anyone hoping to improve
    things, but there are some who are trying.

    Fast-Food Culture

    Yesenia Ayala, 20, works at Food Link, a program in Kettleman City
    that gives free fruits and vegetables to the community.

    She says the program starts handing out food at 11 a.m., but people
    start lining up at 8.

    "Kettleman was real rich for its oil," says Ayala, who was raised
    in the city, which is about halfway between Los Angeles and
    Sacramento. "Its oil wells were going to bring a lot of people,
    but it never happened. We are a rural community surrounded by fields
    and crops."

    The city of 2,500 has almost no sidewalks, no streetlights and barely
    a stop sign.

    "We don't have grocery stores, which is very hard," Ayala says. "We
    have to drive 35 miles in order to get to our nearest grocery store."

    Kettleman City is on Interstate 5, the north-south corridor straight
    through the heart of California's Central Valley. The Kettleman City
    exit is a fast-food mecca.

    "Most of the youth in Kettleman work here in the fast-food
    restaurants," says Ayala, who worked at a Taco Bell in high
    school. "When I was working out there, I was overweight. We would
    get our break and we would go eat at Jack in the Box. You see them
    before they start working in the fast-food restaurant - how slim -
    and then you see them working up there and you say, 'Whoa, what
    happened to her?' "

    An 'Obesogenic' Environment

    Genoveva Islas-Hooker, the daughter of farm workers in Delano, was
    raised working in the fields herself. She is now the regional program
    coordinator at the Central California Regional Obesity Prevention
    Program in Fresno. The program looks at obesity from an environmental
    and policy standpoint.

    Central Valley has been described as the new Appalachia. It includes
    some of the poorest congressional districts with some of the worst
    health disparities in California.

    "Poor communities do not have the infrastructure that supports active
    lifestyles," Islas-Hooker says. "We don't have sidewalks, we don't
    have streetlights. There are packs of dogs," which causes many people
    to stay inside.

    "We don't have access to stores, to healthy produce," she says. "We've
    created this very obesogenic environment, and we question why so many
    people are obese and overweight and at risk for type 2 diabetes -
    well, we've engineered it."

    Islas-Hooker says her program has tried to create greater access to
    fresh food by holding farm stands on school campuses.

    "In Fresno, there was actually a zoning ordinance that prohibited
    the establishment of farmers markets," she says. "We had to go in
    and work at creating a new city ordinance that would allow farmers
    markets in the last year."

    Mark Arax, a former Los Angeles Times reporter and author of the book
    West of the West was born in and lives in Fresno, the grandson of an
    Armenian fruit picker.

    "We're living in a region that produces the finest fruits and
    vegetables in the world, and yet the children of this valley rarely
    taste those fruits and vegetables," he says.

    Alongside the most intensive farm belt the world has ever known, he
    says, is this stunning poverty. Some neighborhoods in Fresno have
    the most concentrated poverty of any city in the country, and all
    the pathology that goes along with it: the drugs and the gangs.

    "We produce more meth and more milk than any region in the country,"
    he says.

    A Hidden Kitchen Vision

    In Bakersfield, another grassroots kitchen effort sprang up from
    a nutrition class that became The Greenfield Walking Group. Made
    up mostly of immigrant Latina women, the group is working with the
    mayor and city council to rid the neighborhood park of stray dogs,
    drugs, gangs and graffiti, and to create walking paths and playground
    equipment. The members walk daily, exercise to blaring merengue music,
    and share potluck meals of enchiladas, chilaquiles and jicama pico
    de gallo.

    "When I saw the women walking around the park, I thought, 'I can do
    this,' " says Beatriz Basulto. "I am in this group because I am obese
    and I need to lose weight. When I started, I couldn't get one turn
    around the park; it was too hard for me. Now I am doing more than 80
    abdominals every day."

    Across the Central Valley, little inroads are being made to improve
    public space and the environment that lead to healthier individuals
    and healthier communities.

    "As long as people are indoors because of their fear, they won't come
    out," Islas-Hooker says. "If we created more forums for neighbors to
    meet each other - days in the park, farmers markets, community gardens,
    environments that promote a healthy lifestyle - there's real power
    when the community members themselves advocate for these changes."

    Recipe: Jicama Pico De Gallo

    Enlarge Courtesy of The Kitchen Sisters Courtesy of Maria Velasquez
    of The Greenfield Walking Group 1 large jicama 1 pineapple 5 oranges
    1 small onion A bit of dried chili pod seeds Some lime juice and salt
    Chop the jicama, pineapple, oranges and onion and mix together with
    the chili pod seeds, lime juice and salt. Serve.
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