The Children's Aid Society

Testimony Before New York City Council Committee on Consumer Affairs In Support of Green Carts Bill

January 31, 2008

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Good morning. My name is Stefania Patinella, Manager of Food and Nutrition programs for The Children's Aid Society. I am joined by parents participants from our East Harlem Community Center. On behalf of our CEO, C. Warren Moses, and our Board of Trustees, I want to thank the Committee on Consumer Affairs for holding these important hearings on Green Cart Legislation.

The Children's Aid Society provides services to over 150,000 children and families in New York City each year, particularly in Harlem, Washington Heights, the South Bronx, and the North Shore of Staten Island through community centers, camps, and community schools; medical and mental health clinics; foster care, adoption and preventive services; early childhood programs; housing for homeless families; juvenile justice; teen pregnancy prevention; legal advocacy and more.

For 155 years, safeguarding the health and wellness of disadvantaged children has been central to our mission. Several years ago, in response to a growing crisis of childhood obesity, we took a serious look at our own food programs and policy. We weren’t entirely happy with what we found—children were bringing too much junk food into our after-school programs; our menus, like those of most organizations that feed thousands of children each day, relied on more processed foods than we would have liked; and our nutrition education program needed a boost. Today, after intensive efforts, we have a robust Food and Nutrition Initiative that we are proud of. Our multi-faceted approach includes:

• Policy: We have implemented a new, agency-wide Food and Beverage Policy as well as a Fitness Policy.
• Education: We work across the life cycle to teach children, teens and parents how to choose, shop for and prepare healthy foods. Our programs include:
  

  Go!Kids, our obesity prevention initiative for early childhood programs

  Seed to Table, our healthy cooking and gardening program for after-school and teen programs.

• Parent Cooking and Nutrition programs
• The Food We Serve Children: We have launched an ambitious and agency-wide New Menus project, with whole foods and plant-based recipes cooked from scratch.
• Advocacy: We support efforts to increase access to high-quality, affordable, healthy foods in low-income neighborhoods.

We are here today to voice our strong support for Green Cart legislation. It is a common-sense, targeted and easily implemented response to a very large problem that the families we serve face everyday: limited access to fresh fruits and vegetables in their neighborhoods.

The NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene report on Green Carts documents well the strong public health need for greater consumption of fruits and vegetables in low-income neighborhoods. The striking correlation between high levels of obesity and diabetes and low consumption of fruits and vegetables the DOHMH and others have documented speaks for itself. We will therefore not restate disheartening statistics in this testimony; rather we will take this opportunity to give voice to community residents.

On learning of the Green Cart legislation, we brought together groups of parents at our community schools and centers in East Harlem and Washington Heights—neighborhoods where Green Carts would be designated—to give them information about this bill and ask their opinion about it. Parents expressed unanimous support and enthusiasm. Here are excerpts of what they said (all quotes are translated from Spanish):

“We don’t have good options. I have to go all the way down to 96th street or 86th street to get the produce I want—that’s not something I can do often, so my family doesn’t eat as many fruits and vegetables as I’d like.”

“If the kids see fruit, they say, ‘mommy, buy me an apple!’, but if they see candy, they say, ‘mommy, buy me candy!’ Since they don’t see a lot of fruit right now, they always ask for candy. By putting fruit on the street, you are creating motivation for kids to ask for apples.”

“Lots of kids in our community are chubby and a lot of them have asthma. I think that both of these problems could be better if kids got more vitamins, especially the vitamins in fresh fruit, like mango, bananas and oranges.”

“In the summer, there are so many people at the one farmer’s market here on Thursdays (in East Harlem). It’s so crowded—that means people really want vegetables! But in the winter, there’s no farmer’s market—we need something here all year round. People need it!”

Parents are clear: they want more fresh fruits and vegetables in their communities and on their tables, for themselves and their children. Our experience with nutrition education programs, as well as with the healthy New Menus we have launched across our sites, reinforces parents’ comments. Where children and parents are given healthy alternatives to the fast foods and processed foods abundant in their communities, they are happy to make the healthy choice. Children love our fresh fruit parfaits and broccoli quesadillas; parents are thrilled to learn fast, inexpensive and healthy recipes they can prepare at home for their families; even the notoriously fussy teenagers, supposedly married to fast food, enthusiastically prepare and enjoy their vegetables.

Indeed, our Healthy Cooking programs are in great demand—in the past two weeks alone, we have received requests from middle school girls at Children’s Aid Community School PS 50 in East Harlem, teens who are transitioning from foster care to independent living at our Next Generation Center in the South Bronx, and the elected youth in our city-wide Youth Council, whose annual conference this year is on Health. They all ask for the same thing: a Cooking and Nutrition program that will teach them to make healthy choices and prepare delicious meals.

We are thrilled to meet this demand for educational programs. However, when it comes to healthy eating, education and access must work in tandem. While we address in our programs the why of healthy eating, and the how to of healthy cooking, we often hit a wall with the where. At some point in every nutrition program, discussion among participants gives rise to anger and frustration over their lack of access to healthy foods. Teens feel an especially keen sense of injustice: they ask why their communities have been overlooked and whether their health is not as important as the health of their “downtown” equivalents. Here’s a letter of support for Green Carts written by one of our longtime teen participants, Charline Mitchell, 18 years old:

To Whom It May Concern,

My name is Charline Mitchell and I started attending Culinary Arts class at The Children’s Aid Society Hope Leadership Academy when I was 15 years old up until I was 17. At Culinary class we made a variety of different tasty dishes that were just as much healthy. One of my favorite desserts we made was with fruit and homemade granola. I have been classified as obese according to the popularly accepted Body Mass Index model. Participating in the Culinary program gave me an incentive to take charge of my weight and try to lead a healthier life. Having fruits and vegetables readily available to me makes it easier for me to commit to a healthy lifestyle. With that said I would like to express my support for implementing the "Green Carts" bill. While "junk" food is readily accessible to virtually anyone in my neighborhood, it is not the same for fruits and vegetables. Passing this bill will give those who are trying to commit to a healthy lifestyle a fighting chance. Thank you in advance for your support.

Sincerely,

Charline Mitchell

In response to the ubiquitous demand we hear from our families for greater access to fresh produce, The Children’s Aid Society piloted a Youthmarket program in Spring 2007, in conjunction with Council on the Environment of New York City (CENYC), at our Community School PS 50 in East Harlem. Youth set up a farm stand right in the lobby of their school to sell local and fresh produce to their community. The overwhelming success of this program astonished us—youth sell an average of $600 of produce at each market—and is evidence, once again, of a great demand for healthy foods in low-income areas. However, as popular as our Youthmarket is, its reach is limited: it targets but one school community. It doesn’t reach Charline Mitchell, nor does it reach our many families in West Harlem, Washington Heights, Staten Island and the Bronx.

We support Green Carts, very simply, because they increase low-income families’ access to fruits and vegetables, which will support their goals for greater health and well-being. We also support the many greenmarket, supermarket and bodega initiatives that strive to increase healthy food options in these communities. We see these industry initiatives as complimentary, not in competition with one another. Indeed, the Green Carts are a win-win solution for residents and industry. Parents and children get the vegetables and fruits they want, and 1,500 new vendors get the chance to make a living while meeting this demand.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify at this important hearing.