Join us on the bus with The Progressive Jewish Alliance and the Alliance for Healthy and Responsible Grocery Stores for a tour of food deserts on Sunday, March 21st.  The bus will leave the Westside JCC at noon and tour the food deserts of Boyle Heights and Lincoln Heights.  The program includes learning from health experts, text study, a visit to a community garden, talks with residents, and concludes with an Interfaith Observance of Passover. 

From our Blueprint to End Hunger:

…an assessment by the East L.A. Community Corporation (ELACC) identified one supermarket for almost 90,000 residents in the Boyle Heights area, or more than four times lower than average for the rest of Los Angeles County…61% of residents of California’s 46th Assembly districtm which includes much of Boyle Heights and some surrounding neighborhoods, are either obese of overweight.   

You can register here or click here for more information.

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I have a good friend who works in a “food desert,” which is a community that lacks access to healthy food.  She interns at a mental health clinic in Boyle Heights.  At lunchtime, she faces a deluge of fast food options: Burger King, Little Caesar’s, Subway, Popeye’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken.  Drug dealers and gang members loiter outside the only market in the area.  Given that her lunch break doesn’t afford her enough time to commute for lunch, she’s forced to choose from this surfeit of unhealthy food.  Fortunately for her, it’s only a lunchtime dilemma.  The residents of Boyle Heights are not so lucky.

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