Access to Healthy and Organic Food is a Major Obstacle in Toronto

Something that the people in Toronto tend to worry about is how to access fresh, affordable and healthy food. For some of the Toronto people, it is quite simple to gain access to these health foods by just walking into the nearest Loblaw store or the street market, along with their wholesale reusable bags.

For other people in the city, the simple necessity of getting healthy locally grown food has been made quite complicates by quite a few factors. For instance, the elderly people find it really hard to travel to the nearest grocery stores, making food accessibility quite a prevalent problem in most parts of Toronto. Even though it is a huge problem, most of the citizens just look over the whole situation.

Growth of communities

Being a part of the United Way’s Neighborhood Strategy, ANC aims at strengthening the inner sub-urban areas ofTorontoand look into the lacking opportunities for people by offering services and programs. Through the United Way Toronto program, it was found that almost thirteen neighborhoods in the city were in particular need of certain services. Access to easy and healthy foods is one of the biggest obstacles for most of these neighborhoods, including Lotherton heights.

Most of the grocery stores in the areas are at least thirty minutes away by walk or require TTC rides. Apart from all the other issues, food access is topping the list of all these problems and the officials are slowing trying to work out this issue.

Carry wholesale reusable bags and buy locally grown food in Lotherton

One of the main ways by which ANC is trying to help the people of Lotherton is by trying to improve the access to food by growing them in community gardens. Residents are asked to help out every week in these gardens, for a couple of hours in exchange for the locally grown fresh produce to take home. Even though this strategy is helping supplement food needs for few of the families in the areas, a simple community garden is quite limited in the impact it needs to provide.

The strategy can obviously not provide enough and more food for the whole community as there are over 4500 people living in it. So, along with all these efforts, the ANC in Lotherton is demanding for an affordable grocery store, which is at a reasonable distance for the whole community.

Source: http://www.thestar.com/specialsections/article/1257059–when-access-to-food-is-a-major-obstacle