2.3 A Response to Negative Food Access

Toronto’s Response to Negative Food Environments

Cities have the potential to mitigate the impact of challenging food environments through initiating policy and programs that increase nutritious food access in the areas that need it most. The city of Toronto has many geographic areas that fall under the above-mentioned negative food environments. Toronto Public Health’s Food Strategy has implemented many initiatives to combat this in the city. The Food Strategy uses a “food-systems perspective” that focuses on nutrition, prevention of diseases, food literacy, social justice, food supply chains, economic development, environmental protection, and climate change mitigation.^[14]14

Grab Some Good

In 2014, one of the key projects of the Toronto’s Food Strategy was called Grab Some Good. This project was initiated to combat the lack of equitable access to healthy food across the city.^[15]15 Many Canadian cities, Toronto included, technically do not have food deserts and, for various reasons are far likelier to have food swamps.^[16]16 Grab Some Good was a partnership between the Food Strategy and community partners like FoodShare.^[17]17 (FoodShare is a food justice organization in Toronto that provides nutritious food to people across the city. They collaborate with the people most affected by poverty to create long-term solutions to food problems.) The three major projects that evolved were Healthy Corner Stores, Mobile Good Food markets, and Subway Pop-Up markets. The goals of Grab Some Good were:

• To offer healthy, affordable and culturally diverse fresh food to residents living in areas that are underserved by healthy food retailers.
• To provide fresh produce at convenient locations at prices that are lower than the average grocery store.
• To promote healthy and sustainable eating habits among all Toronto residents and to support good nutrition and disease prevention interventions.^[18]18

The Healthy Corner Store initiative provided logistical and infrastructure support to local corner stores, aimed at increasing the healthy food available to people in the surrounding neighbourhoods and at ensuring that the owners were making profit from the endeavor.^[19]19 To address the issue of minimal grocery store availability in underserved neighbourhoods, the Food Strategy and FoodShare launched mobile food markets in 2012. These retrofitted wheelchair buses were transformed into mobile food markets and served affordable, healthy food to 11 low-income neighbourhoods in Toronto.^[20]20 The Toronto Transit Commission pop-up markets, another partnership with FoodShare, were established in major transit hubs and provided commuters with access to healthy snacks, as well as fruits and vegetables to take home with them without needing to stop at a grocery store.^[21]21

Each of these three projects attempted to mitigate the negative effects of neighbourhoods found in food swamps in innovative and community-focused ways. They were successful in improving access to nutritious food in the neighbourhoods they served. They offered innovative solutions to food environment problems. Unfortunately, the overarching issue with these types of projects is the lack of financial sustainability. As they all required some degree of municipal funding, the longevity of the projects was not guaranteed and they are therefore no longer running. Nonetheless, these cases show that if municipal governments can prioritize funding to address food swamps, deserts, and mirages, or if community organizations can build self-sustainability, there is great potential to make changes to the way food is accessed in these communities.

Good Food Markets

One of FoodShare’s many successful projects is the Good Food Markets. These markets are found across the city in neighbourhoods that lack access to nutritious food and are run by the community members themselves. The program trains community members on the necessary skills and information needed to run the markets and provides the tools and resources necessary for sustainability.^[22]22 The Good Food Markets not only provide access to food, they work more holistically—as community hubs that engage and connect residents in their own neighbourhood.^[23]23 This type of community engagement is important for neighbourhoods to build social cohesion and strengthen the residents’ ties to their community. This model has great potential for success because it is sustainable and driven by the needs of those who use it.

Conclusion

To ensure healthy communities, it is important to measure food access within specific neighbourhoods. Identifying the type of food environments that communities reside within can help inform targeted responses by municipal governments and community organizations.

It is critical to address the racial and ethnic disparities present in negative food environments. This necessitates structural change through policy-making, planning, and development, in order to address diet quality (related to food environments) within white and minority populations.^[24]24 Such efforts should address the disparities in access to healthful food in neighbourhoods to limit the impact on nutrition and health outcomes.^[25]25

Toronto Public Health’s Food Strategy and FoodShare have shown great examples of engaging in innovative solutions to manage food access, but there are funding challenges that can have an impact on the capacity to help communities in the long term. Moving towards the community hub model has great potential to improve food access and serve communities in a holistic way.