Cure to Child Obesity May Be Nearby Food Store
By Karen Ann Cullotta, quotes La Donna Redmond

Chicago Tribune

March 28, 2004

When it comes to healthy eating, 7-year-old Darius Sumrall is every parent's dream child, clamoring for fresh broccoli, cauliflower and string beans.

For dessert, nothing makes the Englewood youngster happier than savoring a fistful of grapes or peeling open a mandarin orange.

But with the closest supermarket 3 miles away, the family's kitchen table is often laden with junk food--nachos, hamburgers and taco dinners--that Darius' mom, Sharakita Sumrall, reluctantly serves her children out of necessity, not choice.

"I've tried to get on the bus carrying grocery bags with the kids, and it was a nightmare," says Sumrall, 28, a mother of three who does not own a car. "I like to cook for the family, but if I can't walk somewhere to buy the ingredients, we end up eating a lot of unhealthy food that's fattening and greasy."

While Sumrall's children are not obese, she remains worried about the reasons that American children living in the nation's inner cities are increasingly overweight, suffering from sedentary lifestyles that revolve around television and video games and unhealthy diets filled with fast-food burgers, chicken nuggets and pizza.

To be certain, Sumrall's concerns are shared by parents in affluent suburbs such as Barrington and Wilmette as well, where children eating too many fast-food and microwave meals are at risk of childhood obesity alongside youngsters in low-income city neighborhoods such as Austin and Lawndale.

Still, some experts are suggesting that the key factor behind the childhood obesity epidemic in the city's minority neighborhoods can be traced to a disparity in services--primarily, a lack of access to fresh foods because of a shortage of full-scale supermarkets.

Although officials at Dominick's and Jewel say that a neighborhood's racial demographics do not determine corporate decisions about where stores are located, a recent study by the not-for-profit Metropolitan Chicago Information Center suggests otherwise.

According to Mari Gallagher, a senior researcher with the center, of the 86 city stores owned by the "major player" groceries--Dominick's, Jewel, Aldi and Cub Foods--roughly 60 percent are on the North Side.

Gallagher says that, of the 8 of 50 aldermanic wards in Chicago with no "major player" stores, all are in mostly minority areas. Citywide, she says there are 3.4 big grocers per 100,000 residents in white wards, compared with 2.6 in black wards and 2.3 in Latino wards.

The location of grocery stores in minority neighborhoods provides a troubling counterpoint to a recent Sinai Health Systems survey of 1,699 Chicago parents and caregivers about the health of children under age 12 in the household. For example, in largely white Norwood Park, 23 percent of children were obese or overweight. The national average is 26 percent.

In the five other community areas surveyed, all of which have largely African-American or Latino populations, the obesity rate ranged from 58 percent to 68 percent.

While the paradox of how hunger and obesity can co-exist in children from low-income neighborhoods has no easy answers, Gallagher suggests that limited access to nutritious foods is partially to blame.

"In most poor neighborhoods, there are plenty of storefronts, where you can buy a box of Pampers, a pack of cigarettes and a can of Campbell's soup," Gallagher says. "But you just can't get a full range of healthy products like fruits and vegetables or 2 percent milk. Many of these neighborhood grocers are really just glorified liquor stores."

The dearth of high-quality supermarkets in many minority communities is no surprise to LaDonna Redmond, who says it is virtually impossible to buy healthy foods in her West Garfield Park neighborhood.

Within a few short blocks of the Redmond family's three-flat, shoppers can visit 10 beauty-supply shops, an abundance of fast-food joints such as McDonald's and White Castle, and a handful of storefront bodegas.

If illegal contraband is on the shopping list, a wide selection of drugs and guns are for sale on the street. But pesticide-free produce and a bag of granola? That's another story.

"I can walk out my door and buy a semi-automatic weapon or narcotics, but I can't find organic tomatoes or lettuce anywhere," says Redmond, project director for Chicago Food Systems Collaborative. "I need to get in my car and drive to Oak Park."

Redmond is also frustrated that of the $135 million spent last year on groceries by 117,000 residents living in the Austin and Garfield neighborhoods, 85 percent of the revenue left the area.

"I think there is a perception that certain people don't want certain things," Redmond says. "There is this stigma that black people don't want to eat healthy."

Not so, say officials from Jewel and Dominick's, whose full-service grocery stores feature everything from gourmet delis and organic produce to pharmacies offering free visits with a dietitian and are everywhere from the Cabrini-Green community to the city's West Side.

"I think our store at 3240 W. Roosevelt Rd. is a good example of our very significant presence in the inner city," says Wynona Redmond, a spokeswoman for Dominick's. "When we decide to open a store, we want it to be successful, but it's not about the income of the community. It's a matter of how we can grow in this economic climate."

Jewel-Osco spokeswoman Laurie Sanders says, "We have a store at 1224 S. Ashland Ave. on the city's West Side, which is in a very low-income neighborhood. Some of the issues that come into play on where to open a store are, is there any land? And can this community support another grocery store?"

According to store officials, Dominick's and Jewel reach out to customers. They offer field trips to teach the tenets of healthy eating to elementary school children and even dietitians who accompany elderly shoppers down the grocery aisles, helping them read labels and showing them how to create menus that are necessary to control ailments such as heart disease and Type II diabetes.

"When it comes to tackling the epidemic of childhood obesity, there is a role for the community, the schools and the family," says Mary McKenna, a scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

McKenna says a recent CDC study found that, unless childhood obesity is addressed, roughly one-third of today's children will develop adult-onset diabetes.

Another CDC study also suggests that, if the number of overweight youngsters continues to surge, the average life expectancy of this generation of children will be lower than their parents.

On a more hopeful note, McKenna says that, nationwide, the medical community, merchants and parents seem determined to stop this preventable public health crisis.

"A mandate for healthy eating can't come down from Washington," McKenna says. "It has to come from within neighborhoods that are mobilized for change and want to prove they are worthy of good health."

In Chicago's Auburn Gresham neighborhood, Rev. Michael Pfleger, pastor of St. Sabina Catholic Church, and parishioners have worked for years to attract a major supermarket to a neighborhood punctuated by storefront grocers that are often pricey but unsanitary.

After Pfleger recruited 45 volunteer "inspectors," officials with the city's Health Department trained the team to check the temperature of coolers and expiration dates on foods, search for rodent droppings and ensure that liquor and cigarettes were not sold to minors.

"Because of our investigation, the city ended up issuing a tremendous amount of fines," says Pfleger, adding that while some stores addressed the problems, others were forced to close.

The volunteers also discovered that some store owners were driving to the nearest Sam's Club, stocking up on staple items such as bread and cereal and selling the products to low-income residents for double the original price.

Pfleger was shocked to learn the practice was within the law, yet he remains frustrated by the ethical quagmire it poses.

"It happens everywhere, but what they are really doing is taking the neighborhood captive," Pfleger says. "We're talking about young families without a car, and grandparents raising their grandchildren."

Although Pfleger is heartened by the opening of a Save-A-Lot grocery store in the neighborhood, he hopes that other supermarkets, as well as full-service restaurants, a dry cleaner and other retailers will be willing to give the community a chance.

"Some of these businesses feel like, `Why bother coming to your neighborhood if we are going to get your business anyway?'" Pfleger says. "But we are not asking for charity. They just need to talk to the stores that have opened here, and they will learn they can double their money."