Healthy, affordable food frequently hard to find for poor

• By SARAH CHACKO
• Advocate Capitol News Bureau
• Published: May 10, 2009 - Page: 1A
• Editor's Note: This is the third story in an occasional series about poverty, an issue that negatively touches every Louisiana resident in some way.
  

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Off a two-lane road in Labadieville, Stella Davis holds herself up with a cane as she slowly makes her way to the front door of a church fellowship hall.

It’s a trek that Davis, 64, makes regularly for a box of food to help feed the seven people, including grandchildren and great-grandchildren, who live with her about 10 miles away in Napoleonville.

“If you could give some more,” she said, “we’d take it.”

Assumption Parish, where sugar cane covers much of the land and about 22 percent of the residents live in poverty, does not have many stores that offer healthy food choices.

A recent state-commissioned study shows many low-income families, particularly in rural areas, have limited access to healthy food.

While 35 of the state’s 64 parishes are considered rural, people in many urban areas also fight to find healthy, affordable food. Residents in Old South Baton Rouge, between LSU and downtown, have been trying for years to get a neighborhood grocery.

State Sen. Ann Duplessis, who called for the food retail study last year, is now pushing a bill to create special financing for new stores and markets that can provide fresh produce to poor and rural areas.

Poor nutrition is linked to many health issues that are especially prevalent in low-income populations.

Families often turn to food banks, churches and other nonprofit organizations to supplement their monthly food needs. But nutritionists question the types of food poor families are getting.
In 2007, 65 percent of adults in Louisiana were overweight or obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

The CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System also shows that the percentage of obese people increases as incomes decrease.

Obesity raises the risk of diabetes, heart disease, certain cancers, high blood pressure, stroke and depression, the Louisiana Healthy Food Retail Study Group said in its report.

“Louisiana spends an estimated $1.3 billion annually on direct medical costs related to obesity; indirect economic costs are nearly as high,” the report says.

Carol E. O’Neil, a professor of human ecology at LSU, said she and other professors researched the diets of a group of lower-income women. She called the results “appalling.”