Learning more and more about the city I call home has become a pursuit of mine over the past year. Yet over all my exploration and understanding of the city one huge mystery has laid untouched for me. The South side; known by most people as dangerous. So over the next two months I want to maybe shed some light on this other side of Chicago. I don’t know exactly where my journeys here will take me, or What God has in store for me while I’m here but I hope to effectively and accurately display that on my blog site.
A week ago I moved into the Woodlawn Neighborhood over on the south side of Chicago. The neighborhood is mainly residential with very little stores or other options for food. I can walk from my house over on 62nd ST. to Save a Lot, a very small grocery store barely bigger then a 7Eleven, there are also two corner stores and one family restaurant. For starters this surprised me a year ago when I first moved to Chicago. How do some neighborhoods have very little options for people to choose from? How can you make healthy choices on food when there are few to none to choose from?
Some of the money we pay for taxes goes to provide low-income families living below the poverty line in the US money for food. The majority of families in this neighborhood I live in are below this line. So imagine you are low-income family struggling to make ends meet. You apply for a Links card, food stamps and are accepted to help pay for groceries for your family. Yet when you go to the store all you see are frozen foods and isles of junk food. So you have to buy these frozen foods, and you think to yourself well at least there’s food.
For me its become just an annoyance, I have to get a ride to a store or take the L but for most in this community that’s not an easy option. It’s to much of an expense when you barely have money to cover rent. So my question over this thought is how does a bad diet affect our daily life?
Quick response I’m sure any of you can go do some longer research then just look it up on answers.com but this is what I gathered from this site. “Junk foods also consist of refined (processed) carbohydrate. Refined (processed) carbohydrates are a major cause of weight gain, obesity, and many diet related diseases. For good health and well-being, these foods should be strictly limited apart from the occasional treat”
I don’t have any answers on how this can be fixed in a quick and easy way. Some long term ideas are the role of the church, and Christians. Sunshine Gospel Ministries provides a fresh food market weekly here in Woodlawn that accepts the food stamps, Links card. More organizations both Christian and non-could very much improve this issue by helping their neighbors go to places that provide fresh food. Or those of us in business could open up a restaurant or grocery store in a low-income neighborhood. Yes that business wouldn’t make as much as somewhere else but it would enhance the community and the life of others. There’s more to life then money and status
