jump to navigation

Monkey Monday: coming up for air edition 14 December 2009 8:08 am

Posted by Tracy in : Marion Nestle,events,fangirl,geekery,health at every size,news,nyc,politics,school,sustainability,video,work,writing , View Comments

Hey, so it’s finals week from now until my last paper is due on the 23rd (which is an awful deadline and I sincerely hope to be done before then) and in the meantime I’ve been a big slacker which is why I haven’t posted and blah blah blah excuses excuses. Last week was ten thousand kinds of awesome, though.

On Monday morning, I went to an awesome event at The New School, celebrating the NYC FRESH initiative, which had not yet officially passed City Council, although it did on Wednesday. FRESH is Food Retail Expansion to Support Health, and it’s a mix of zoning and tax incentives for full-service grocery stores in certain underserved neighborhoods (Northern Manhattan, the South Bronx, Central Brooklyn and Jamaica, Queens). Not only must the stores devote a certain amount of square footage to fresh produce and other whole foods, they are required to accept EBT and WIC (which is really only common sense if they’re actually going to serve the lower-income communities that food retailers often avoid) and publically, transparently commit to good labor practices, so that people who work at those stores can afford to shop there. So awesome. And (more…)