By VIJI SUNDARAM
New America Media
Oakland, Calif.

For the almost 45 years they have been living in West Oakland, James Bell’s grandparents have been driving two miles to the Pak’nSave in Emeryville to buy fresh produce.

But these days the 80-year-old Robert Bell doesn’t always feel well enough to drive, so he has James do the buying for him and his wife Christine.

There are occasions though when James’ work schedule doesn’t allow him time to make the trip, so the elderly couple goes without fresh fruits and vegetables for days. That’s not good for their health.

“This area has a lot of low-income seniors who find it difficult to get to Emeryville, so they manage without fresh produce, or they pick up whatever is available here,” James Bell, 29, said.

In this down-at-the-heels neighborhood of 28,000, located between downtown Oakland and San Francisco Bay, the only grocery store is Eugene International Gateway Foods.

Eugene’s goods are so geared toward the Asian community, it is easier to find lemongrass than artichokes or asparagus, according to Kenna Stormogipson, a 26-year-old West Oakland resident who teaches at Oakland Tech High.

West Oakland is a neighborhood ringed by three freeways. Its proximity to the Port of Oakland makes it one of the most polluted places in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Besides these drawbacks, the fact that there’s not a single grocery store that offers fresh produce popular among the black and Latino residents makes West Oakland one of the least desirable places to live in the Bay Area.

“People have left West Oakland because they see it as an unhealthy place,” Stormogipson said.

Studies have shown that eating a rainbow of food colors provided by fruits and vegetables can decrease the risk of getting cancer.

“There is definitely a link between diet and cancer,” said Uriyoan Colon Ramos, who does health promotion and disease prevention research at the National Cancer Institute, with a focus on the Latino community.

Ramos said that while the risk of developing cancer is the same for Latinos living in their homelands as it is for those who have recently immigrated to the United States, the longer the Hispanic immigrants stay here the greater their chances of getting obese, and “obesity is a major risk factor for cancer.”

No wonder, environmental advocates say, the less affluent people who live in such neighborhoods as West Oakland and Bayview-Hunters Point in San Francisco have the highest rate of hospitalization in Northern California for such common diseases as cancer, diabetes, asthma and heart disease.

“I think food definitely plays a big role in this,” said Anjali Asrani, youth program manager at the Literacy for Environmental Justice office in San Francisco.

“People are just starting to realize that where a person lives has an impact on their quality of life and health,” said Meena Palaniappan, a senior research associate at Pacific Institute, an Oakland-based nonprofit.

A study done in 2005 by Dr. Nadine Burke, a pediatrician with California Pacific Medical Center, on the availability of healthful food in Bayview versus the Marina shows that the latter, which has an 84 percent white population and where median income was $84,710, has more than 100 restaurants, five convenience stores and one fast-food restaurant. The average cost of bread in that neighborhood is $1.09.

In Bayview-Hunters Point, on the other hand, where the median income was $37,146, there are 28 restaurants, 13 convenience stores and six fast food joints. A loaf of bread there costs almost $2.

West Oakland has six fast food restaurants, a couple of liquor stores and Eugene Gateway. According to the 2000 Census data, the median income there was $12,000 per year.

“It’s the lowest income neighborhood in Oakland,” said Dana Harvey, executive director of the West Oakland-based Environmental Justice Institute and acting director of Mandela Foods Cooperative, a worker-owned outfit that is trying to open a grocery store in the neighborhood.

“I can’t shop here because there’s no fresh meat, no fresh milk and nothing of good quality,” said Lace McAdams, a local resident, who works as a security guard. “I moved here from Hawaii [eight years ago] because this place was affordable. Now I have asthma and food allergies.”

Realizing how something as basic as fresh fruits and vegetables could have an impact on the health of residents, Literacy for Environmental Justice, a nonprofit in Bayview-Hunters Point, embarked on the Good Neighbor Project in 2002, successfully persuading a handful of corner and liquor stores to line their shelves with fresh fruit and vegetables.

A second project launched last September, Front Door Farms, brings a mobile farmers’ market to Malcolm X Academy every Tuesday and to Gloria R. Davis College Preparatory Academy on Friday afternoons. On Thursdays, Front Door Farms delivers inexpensive boxes of organic fruits and vegetables to neighbors’ homes.

“We buy it from wholesale produce companies in San Francisco, drop the price and sell it to residents,” said Carlos Julio Gonzalez, who coordinates the youth-run project. The prices, he said, are subsidized by Literacy for Environmental Justice’s grants.

In West Oakland, under Harvey’s leadership, some residents tried to get Bridge Housing, the developers that built a mixed housing project near the West Oakland BART rail service station, to rent retail space to worker-owned Mandela Foods Cooperative, so the community could have easy access to fresh produce.

But when Mandela could not come up with a three-year rent guarantee, or pay for part of the construction, Bridge decided to lease the space to a 99-cent store.

“I’m very disappointed with the developer,” said Oakland City Council member Nancy Nadal. “The food co-op would not only have provided residents with much-needed healthy foods, but it would have also given the low-income residents an opportunity to build wealth.”

Viji Sundaram is an editor at New America Media.

National Catholic Reporter, February 2, 2007