Good morning, and thank you to the distinguished NYC Public Health Board Members for being here today. It’s an honour to be here with you.
Today, there’s no question that America has never been more prosperous and our future has never been brighter. However, one question remains: Who stands to inherit our legacy?
Currently, one in three New Yorkers are diagnosed with either diabetes or obesity, and every year, over 4 billion is spent annually on health care.
The statistics are even more startling among youths, with 40 percent of teenagers projected to be obese or overweight by 2020. Obesity is the only trend among Americans that has grown steadily over the past few years, and these consequences concern all of us.
As Mayor, I am committed to
…show more content…
However, much more can be done to curb this epidemic. Healthy eating habits do not merely extend to schools and homes, but is very much under the influence of mass media and corporations.
At present, there is no advertising standard for sweetened beverages or nutritional guidelines for school lunches. Walking down the grocery aisles, our children are confronted with increasingly unhealthy food choices. By improving access to healthy food, we are instilling the proper eating habits in them from a young
…show more content…
Two of the largest conglomerates in America, Nestle and Coca Cola, currently own over 60 percent of the retail food market combined. This would suggest that we are currently being exposed to a larger range of sugary and fat filled foods, compared to the whole foods of our generation. We need to combat this by establishing the importance of real, fresh food in homes.
To help us in achieving the goal of providing healthy, easily accessible, yet affordable food, the Green Wagons initiative was designed to promote the consumption of fruits and vegetables to all New Yorkers. Under this scheme, mobile carts were sent to all ‘green desert’ neighbourhoods with limited access to fresh food, selling fresh produce at a lower price than grocery stores.
Here in New York, bodegas are often the default food store for residents in many of these ‘green desert’ neighbourhoods. Through the Better Bodegas initiative, over ten thousand bodegas in New York now stock fresh food and vegetables after being provided with adequate funding. I am optimistic that this will improve the overall health of these communities, when demand for healthy food