Healthy Kids Challenge Supports Let’s Move: How Cities and Towns Can Make Healthy Food Affordable and Accessible

This is the final challege for April: Make healthy food easier to access in your community. That’s a tall order, but not impossible. We know because we work with communities every day to meet this challenge of making the healhty choice, the easy choice. It takes time, commitment, a plan, and support, to say the least. But don’t take our word for it, read on to see why we fully support Let’s Move!…

“More than 23 million Americans, including 6.5 million children, live in low-income urban and rural neighborhoods that are more than a mile from a supermarket. These communities are known as “food deserts” since they lack access to affordable, nutritious food. Lack of access is one reason why many children are not eating recommended levels of fruits, vegetables and whole grains.

Food insecurity and hunger among children is widespread. A recent USDA report showed that in 2008, an estimated 49 million people, including 17 million children, lived in households that experienced hunger multiple times throughout the year. Let’s Move! to ensure that all families have access to healthy, affordable food in their communities.

In our effort to fight obesity in children and adolescents, it is important that we focus on increasing access to healthy and affordable foods. Here are some ways that cities and towns can play an important role in providing access to affordable and healthy food options through activities such as the following:

• Establish a Food Policy Council
• Increase enrollment in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)
• Support the sale of local foods across the community by offering incentives and encouraging the establishment of farmers’ markets.
• Promote policies that support and protect community gardens.
• Pass food policies that require food and beverages purchased with government funds to meet certain nutrition standards.
• Require access to free and safe drinking water in public places.
• Ensure that residents can access healthy andd affordable food through public transportation—by realigning bus routes, providing free shuttles, or other means.”*

(*Let’s Move!, Make Healthy Food Affordable and Accessible page.)

So to help you along the path of creating a healthier community, here are some more resources:

Let’s Move Faith and Communities Toolkit

Let’s Move Cities, Towns, and Counties

Let’s Move Community Garden Checklist

Let’s Move Healthy Communities

Let’s Move Action Ideas

Let’s Move Faith and Communities Success Stories

For more information on how Healthy Kids Challenge helps communities make the healthy choice, the easy choice, click here.

The Winner of the Get Your Plate in Shape Challenge + Winning with Gardens

And the winner of the Get Your Plate in Shape Challenge is Liz Samball. Liz won a Healthy Kids Challenge T-shirt and a set of Explore MyPlate wristbands for her pictures and story about how she helps kids get their plates in shape. Congrats, Liz! Check out her pictures and success story!

And speaking of winning…everyone wins with when a garden grows! Don’t you agree? This month just happens to be National Garden Month, too. I have a wonderful case of spring fever right now, so I have to share with you my latest web resources for gardening…gardening with kids of course!

IMGP0854 - vege garden (Photo credit: RaeAllen)

Kids Gardening

Kids Gardening is a wonderful resource from the National Gardening Association, with a plethora of info., including their sections devoted to school gardening and family gardening. I have so much more to share about gardens in the next couple of weeks, so to close this week I simply challenge you to take one simple action to get your garden started!