By Stacey Patton

When I moved to the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn some years ago, there was only one small, Latino-owned grocery store that served consumers of the then predominantly black neighborhood.

As you entered the store, a pungent brew of slaughtered meat and dirty mop water greeted you. Customers batted large black flies whirling around spotted fruits and wilted veggies. As I walked down the aisles, my feet echoed under me as they stuck to unknown liquids that had dried on the surfaces and between the crevices of the hexagonal black and white tiles.

Back then, a dollar could buy two 26-ounce cartons of Morton’s salt. Economy-sized bags of regular or barbeque-flavored pork rinds were a featured item in the snack section. Red buckets of chitterlings were sold daily, not just around the New Year’s holiday. Also for sale were cheap, bright, electric-colored drinks and jaw-breaking candies found nowhere else but in the ‘hood.

Flash forward to today.

That same grocery store has been newly renovated. An automatic sprinkler system plays crackling thunder as water sprits down on the organic fruits and veggies. There’s tofu, Brie, cuts of hot soppresatta, vegetable chips, an assortment of baguettes, expensive beers, and bottled fruit smoothies laced with antioxidants. Mister Clean and ammonia now share shelf space with eco-friendly household products like Mrs. Meyers Clean Day lemon verbena-scented countertop spray and wipes. And the last time I shopped there, the workers spoke more English, smiled and offered tiny cups of hors d’oeuvres.

Could it be that all this sprucing up and stocking of healthier food has something to do with the influx of the neighborhood’s white residents?

Ask most black folks that are still able to afford living in Fort Greene and they will say “yes.”

That answer has been given by the poorer residents of gentrifying neighborhoods for decades. Now, as then, it raises questions. Not least among them are people with limited resources having equal access to food.

In New York City, the Bloomberg administration recently announced a new plan to bring grocery stores to poor areas of New York City. Officials say that the proposal, unanimously approved by the City Planning Commission late last month, is part of the city’s ever-expanding campaign to make New Yorkers eat better.

The current plan provides zoning exceptions which will allow for the construction of larger buildings in neighborhoods where poverty and diet-related diseases runs high and fresh food is scare. The plan will also give tax abatements and exemptions for approved stores.

But is this plan really about providing equitable access to fresh food for all, and combating bad eating habits and reducing diet-related diseases? Or is it about encouraging gentrification’s sweep into northern Manhattan, central Brooklyn, the South Bronx and downtown Queens—the areas targeted under the new plan?

Building private sector supermarkets is one way to deal with the problem of food equity, but there are other low-cost big choice ways to deal with food access, said Makani Themba-Nixon, Executive Director of The Praxis Project, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit policy advocacy organization which focuses on health equity and justice. Nixon contends that because food is part of a profitable market system, elected officials don’t ask: what does it mean to make sure people are fed and fed well?

“Essentially, this New York plan says that if you live in a poor neighborhood, you have to have gentrification in order to get access to supermarkets,” Nixon told The Defenders Online in a phone interview. “Supermarkets are leaders in the shift in neighborhoods and there is a web of policy that shapes food access for people of color.”

Nixon pointed to how the deregulation of food markets in the 1960s led to more stores in urban centers depending on cigarettes, alcohol, candies and certain kinds of advertisements as revenue streams.

“There are ways to make money without selling fresh food. And we still live with that legacy today,” said Nixon.

With a grim economy and rising costs of healthy foods, no one can be certain that the City’s new plan will significantly change eating habits. In fact, the City’s plan may be at least temporarily undermined by developers not wanting to take the economic risk. It is also safe to say that what guides food choices for most people with limited funds is cost versus the health value of the available foods.

The New York Times interviewed Christina Minardi, president for the Northeast region at Whole Foods, about the New York plan. Minardi praised the plan and said that it offered an “enticing” incentive for the chain, which has numerous stores in Manhattan, but said that Harlem was not an area which had been seriously scouted.

Whole Foods, she said, needs a “certain concentration of people that live our lifestyle” and care about “what they’re putting into their bodies.”

I find this kind of paternalistic, reformist rhetoric misdirected. The problem isn’t that people of color and the poor don’t care about what they eat. Lack of access, funds, and education, in tandem, are the issue. I say, build Whole Foods chains, Trader Joes and other chains in the ‘hood, make prices affordable, and educate consumers about the nutritional value of healthy foods. Then, see what happens.

Nixon says that the conversation shouldn’t be about minorities and their food choices. Nor should it be about whether or not they are in the streets clamoring for fresh food stores in their neighborhoods.

“This conversation has become calcified around black people,” she said. “That we don’t do enough. That’s there inaction in our communities. The assumption is that white people are out there demanding fresh foods and that’s why they have it. There is such a thing as structural and market racism.”

Nixon also maintains that certain stores don’t want to market to black and brown communities because they don’t want to become “ghetto” stores.

“Whiteness is a great brand,” said Nixon. “This is the fundamental issue. There are basic things you shouldn’t have to fight for. You shouldn’t have to fight for food in your neighborhood. And we shouldn’t blame our communities when what really happens is that policy makers, elected officials, and store owners make discriminatory decisions that people have to defend against. There’s a reason why Coke is cheaper than water and candy is cheaper than fruit. These insidious sets of policies make this happen in our neighborhoods, and it’s about making money and not about people’s health.”

I’m happy to see that my old neighborhood grocery got an upgrade. Now that I’ve moved to the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, I welcome the City’s plan to bring healthier options to my ‘hood, which has an over-abundance of bullet-proof Chinese takeout spots, liquor stores, and bodegas. I’m fortunate enough to have a job that pays enough for me to order my groceries from Fresh Direct or to jump in my car and drive over to one of many grocery stores or gourmet shops in the predominantly white Brooklyn Heights sections.

Without such resources, my food options would be limited. Perhaps I’d have to settle for Chico sticks, greasy fried chicken with or without the trans-fat, and mystery drinks under a dollar.

Stacey Patton is the Senior Editor and writer for The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.