Paul Bass Photo
Steps away from the gleaming peppers and tomatoes and broccoli already on sale, New Haven’s healthful food brigade brought a new item to Congress Market to get the neighborhood eating better: Chips Ahoy! fudge-drizzled chocolate chip cookies.
Seriously.
That might sound counterintuitive. But this wasn’t your typical bring-the-veggies-and-fruit event.
The event was the latest opening of a “corner store” public health campaign in town. The city’s health department and Yale’s Community Alliance for Research and Engagement (CARE) are working with neighborhood convenience stores — aka junk-food mills — to add and more prominently display alternatives to soda and high-sugar, high-fat, processed gunk.
They’ve already done that at two convenience stores, in Dwight and Fair Haven. Thursday the crew launched its third effort, at Congress Market across from John C. Daniels School on Congress Avenue.
Unlike the first two locations, Congress Market already sells lots of good-for-you food, from fresh yucca and potatoes to apples. And it displays it up front. Fresh fruit salads. Rows of fresh veggies.
But like any neighborhood store, it also sells lots of junk food. So when storeowners Nina and Tony Adames agreed to sign on to the campaign, the CARE crew prepared a display of less-junky snacks to greet customers as soon as they walk in.
In choosing items, they followed guidelines prepared by New York’s Healthy Bodegas Initiative. Those guidelines call for avoiding snacks that have more than 200 calories or 200 mg. of salt per serving, or that have less than 35 percent of their calories from fat. (There are other requirements, too; you can find them on page 52 of this document, CARE’s overall “toolkit” for neighborhood stores.)
The Adameses had lots of healthful food in their store already. But they didn’t feature much in the way of relatively healthful snacks. Until now.
“We wouldn’t advocate for these over fruits and vegetables,” explained CARE research assistant Naa Sackey as she put finishing touches on the display (pictured at the top of the story). The idea is to influence all purchases customers make to improve their health. Besides the fudge-drizzled cookies and Mister Salty milk chocolate pretzels, the display featured pistachios, red onions, bananas, and plantains.
“If you buy in this zone,” said CARE Assistant Director Alycia Santilli (center rear in photo), “you’re guaranteed it’s a healthy snack.”
Mariluc Viches, a regular customer who lives around the block on Hallock Street, said she especially likes the red onion. “That’s nutrition for the skin,” she said, pointing to her forearm.
Santilli said CARE plans to bring the campaign to at least three more corner stores, in West River, the Hill, and Fair Haven.
The results at the first two stores have so far been “mixed” in the campaign’s first two months, Santilli reported.
At Clinton Food Center in Fair Haven, for instance, the owner at first agreed to feature only bottled water and 100 percent juice beverages in a prominent cooler. Customers were confused; they kept demanding soda and couldn’t find it. So he mixed the soda back in. Santilli said the group plans to work with the owner to inform customers better but try to return to making more healthful drinks more visible.
She said the campaign has worked out better at Adam’s Deli-N-Food at the corner of Platt and Edgewood, across from Troup school. Even there, though, the CARE crew needs to keep tabs on the experiment and make suggestions.
For instance, the store originally made the “Healthy Corner Store” sign its most prominent one in its front window. But lately it has been resting on its side, partially obscured, beside a more visible Maverick cigarettes sign.
The healthy campaign sign fell down, as did the cigarette sign, which had been higher up in the window, owner Arshad Chaudhry explained as he served a loosie to a customer. He said he plans to return the window to its original display.
He was asked how the healthful campaign is working out so far.
“It’s moving slow, but it’s moving,” he said. “Some people like it. Some don’t.”
He has kept baskets of bananas and apples by the front window near a display of granola bars, zoo animal crackers and other better-for-you snacks that immediately greet visitors.
Chaudhry said he’s selling about 10 bananas a day, maybe nine or 10 oranges, five or six apples. He sells more when Troup is in session and the kids come by.
An impromptu trash receptacle outside Congress Food Market.
Change comes slowly. Keep plugging away.