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Health Food Summit Connects Advocates With Bodega Owners

By Gustavo Solis | November 14, 2014 5:45pm | Updated on November 17, 2014 8:59am
  The FRESH Food Retail Summit, held Friday at Hunter College, connects nonprofits with businesses.
FRESH Food Retail Summit
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EAST HARLEM — Healthy eating advocates are trying to make fruits and vegetables at your local bodega more appetizing. 

The Fresh Food Retail Summit at Hunter College on Friday connected advocates with bodega and grocery store owners hoping to bring healthier produce to their stores.

“There has never been a group that comes together from the nonprofit side looking at the brick and mortar side of things,” said Sheilah Crowley of City Harvest, one of the summit’s eight co-sponsors. “A lot of attention is usually focused on farm to table and farmers markets.”

Since last year’s inaugural summit, 40 organizations from the five boroughs have joined forces to highlight best practices and keep tabs on what works in different neighborhoods.

The organization, The Healthy Food Retail Networking Group, also holds quarterly meetings to keep everyone up to date, said Colleen Flynn of LISC, a nonprofit that provides healthy food to low-income communities.

Before working together, there was a disconnect between the nonprofit world and the business world, said Janet Poppendieck of the Food Policy Center at Hunter College.

Joining forces with businesses allows advocacy groups to learn about some of the hurdles they face. Some of them included having to pay more than big chains for fresh produce.

“We are the smaller guys and the smaller guys pay more,” said Alex Herrera of the Herrera Deli Group. “You have to pay an x amount of something to get the deal but we can’t hold this amount. So we have to buy three boxes of something but we can only hold two.”

An area where shop owners have been successful is with trying out a variety of products.

Grab-and-go items like pre-cut fruits and vegetables have become more and more popular, said Johnny Diaz, who operates three Fine Fare Supermarkets.

Getting families to pick healthy food options over the cheaper alternatives is not easy, said Maura Regan, senior vice president and general manger of Sesame Workshop, who worked with First Lady Michelle Obama to fight childhood obesity with the Partnership for a Healthier America.

“The biggest challenge was that everyone wanted to get started right away and everyone wanted to see the results right away,” said Regan, the summit’s keynote speaker.

The well-documented history of one of their characters' love for cookies made it particularly difficult. But they found a way to turn the negative into a positive.

“Who better to teach kids about healthy eating?” she said. “It has been a challenge; if there was a plate of cookies here, Cookie Monster would gobble them up. But he is learning that cookies are a sometimes food and fruits and vegetables are an every time food.”