ApplePushers

Related Resources

The Apple Pushers tells the stories of five immigrant street cart vendors who are part of an urban program designed to bring more fresh produce into New York City's food deserts (places where finding a fresh red apple can be a serious challenge). To learn more about the issues of healthy food access in underserved communities, as well as the importance of creating business opportunities for entry-level entrepreneurs, please check out the resources below.

Food Access

• PolicyLink's The Grocery Gap: Who Has Access to Food and Why It Matters.
• PolicyLink, The Food Trust, and the Reinvestment Fund's Healthy Food Financing Initiative.
• The Fair Food Foundation report Healthy Food for All.
• Rebecca Flournoy's report Healthy Foods, Healthy Communities.
• The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Report to Congress Access to Affordable and Nutritious Foods – Measuring and Understanding Food Deserts and Their Consequences.
• The USDA's food desert map.  Another map, published by Paula Forbes, is at Eater.com.
• The USDA also has several initiatives, including  Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food, and Chefs Move to Schools.
• The American Journal of Preventative Medicine's study on the distribution of food stores.
• Donald Rose and Danielle Rickland's study, Food store access and household fruit and vegetable use among participants in the US Food Stamp Program.
• The Chicago Council on Global Affairs' Global Agricultural Development Initiative.
• Market Umbrella, devoted to cultivating public markets for public good.
• The Sustainable Food Lab.
• Slow Food USA, a global, grassroots movement.
• Turning Food Deserts into Job Oases, paper by featured NYC Coalition Against Hunger Executive Director Joel Berg.
• Michelle Obama calls upon grocery giants to help stamp out food deserts in an article from CNN.
• Walmart's Fresh Food Makeover article in The Nation announcing that the Obama administration has partnered with Walmart to eradicate food deserts by 2017 by increasing access to healthy food and creating jobs.
• Stockbox Grocers featured in Good Food Magazine, are Seattle entrepreneurs' latest venture to bring miniature mobile supermarkets to food deserts.
• Donald Rose and Danielle Rickland's study, Food store access and household fruit and vegetable use among participants in the US Food Stamp Program.
• Article in NJ Spotlight states that The New Jersey Food Access Initative now has gathered nearly $20 million to help eliminate NJ Food Deserts.

Obesity

• The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has estimated that 72.5 million Americans are obese, and that Black individuals have a 51% higher prevalence of obesity than white individuals, and Hispanics have a 21% higher prevalence.
• The CDC has also estimated that the medical costs due to obesity are $147 billion dollars on an annual basis, and expected to be $343 billion dollars per year in 2020.
• The Robert Wood Foundation report How Obesity Threatens America's Future.
• Let's Move!, First Lady Michelle Obama's initiative.
• Sonya Grier, et all, published Fast-Food Marketing and Children's Fast-Food Consumption, studying the disproportionate amount of advertising to children of color.
• An abstract of Jennifer Black's article reviewing 90 studies on neighborhood determinants of obesity in Science Review.
• Food Alliance.
• American Academy of Pediatrics
• Fair Food:  Growing a Healthy, Sustainable Food System for All, by Oran B. Hesterman.
• Farm to School, USDA's recent report on Farm to School.
• Real Food, Real Choice -the Portland Community Food Security Coalition's report on SNAP and farmers markets in the U.S.
• Wholesome Wave, based in Bridgeport Connecticutt  facilitates the link between local agriculture and the under invested communities who demand it.
• F as in Fat,  by the Trust for America's Health warns how obesity threatens America's future in 2011.
• Too Fat to Fight,  CNN article on obesity which is seriously impairing eligibility for military enlistment.
• School lunch goes gourmet, article from New Hampshire Public Radio on the school systems effort to fight obesity.
• Pizza is a vegetable? USDA spending bill leaves school lunch program intact - pizza and all.
• Thanks to Ms. Lee's Class at Colorado Tutors for this link on Childhood Obesity.
  

Immigrant Entrepreneurship

• Justin Webb and his team published You Say Illegal, I Say Legitimate, a scholarly review of entrepreneurship in the informal economy.
• Mitchell Duniere's book, Sidewalk, chronicles a year on the street in New York City spent with street cart vendors.  Duniere, a professor at Princeton University, appears in this film.
• Harvard Business School Professor Emeritus, Tom McCraw, studies immigrant entrepreneurs in his journal article, Immigrant Entrepreneurs in US Financial History, 1775-1914.  McCraw also participated in background interviews for this film.
• Center for Urban Future, in its 2007 study, A World of Opportunity, looks at immigrant entrepreneurs as key engines for positive growth.
• Immigrants Play Key Role as City Entrepreneurs, study from The New York Times shows about 48% of business owners in New York are foreign born.

New York Resources

• The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is currently tackling obesity, diabetes and heart disease, including the innovative program to help move fresh fruits and vegetables into lower income areas, the NYC Green Cart Initiative.  The articulated goal of the Green Carts is to provide an additional 75,000 New Yorkers with fresh fruits and vegetables.
• The New York City DOH is also engaged in other initiatives to increase the consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables; Health Bucks (coupons at farmer's markets); Healthy Bodegas; the Fresh Initiative (creating zoning and other incentives for grocery stores locating in low income areas), among others.
• The Citizen's Community for Children advocated and analyzed the impact of the NYC Green Cart Initiative.
• Montefiore Medical Center, located in the Bronx, is creating innovative programs, including having doctors write prescriptions for fruits and vegetables.
• Karp Resources.  Supports food businesses and agriculture initiatives in the public and private sector.  Karp Resources provides support services to Green Cart vendors.
• The Street Vendor Project provides advocacy and legal representation of street vendors in New York.  Vamos Unidos provides advocacy and guidance for Hispanic and Latino street vendors in New York.
• Make the Road New York promotes equal rights and economic and political opportunity for low-income New Yorkers.
• In light of Burger King's plan to launch food trucks, New York lawmakers warn the fast food giant to Keep your Whoppers off our streets.

Other Resources

• Food Matters, by Mark Bittman, a writer for the New York Times.
• Are mobile markets the solution to food deserts?, by Laurie Tisch in the Huffington Post.
• "Fresh Moves" - A Chicago suburb innovates ways to bring produce in.
• How a Community Group is Changing Ideas About Food: Detroit battles food deserts by starting a small city farm.
• Detroit Truck Responds to City's Food Desert Crisis: NPR's report about Detroit's use of ice-cream trucks to bring fresh produce into local communities.
• Politics of the Plate, written by Barry Estabrook, a contributor to The New York Times, Washington Post and others.
• U.S. Food Policy by Parke Wilde, who teaches and writes about U.S. Food Policy at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University.
• Edible Communities produces community-based, local-foods publications.
• Food Politics is the blog of Marion Nestle, Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health at New York University.