Healthy eating is catching on

With farmers’ markets abounding, school curriculums emphasizing good diets and a first lady who made childhood obesity a topic of national discussion, it seems that being healthy has never been more of a priority.

Last month, a major report found Americans’ calorie consumption has declined for the first time in decades.

The authors of a study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found calorie consumption has dropped most among children, with full-calorie soda sipping significantly declining among all groups.

“That’s a tremendously welcome development,” said Steven Froot, chairman of Community Board (CB) 8’s Health, Hospitals and Social Services Committee. “That’s really major, if that’s happening.”

Healthy eating has been on CB 8’s agenda for some time. The board has sponsored youth–run farmers’ markets in Marble Hill and at the Riverdale Neighborhood House.

Friends of Van Cortlandt Park has a similar project. 

And green-thinking Riverdalians seem to place a premium on fresh produce, with the Riverdale Community Support Agriculture Group bringing members crunchy carrots, succulent strawberries and all manner of produce from a farm in Hawthorn Valley for the past 20 years.

Health indicators in Bronx County as a whole remain the worst in the state. A prominent annual study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found 28 percent of adult Bronxites were obese in 2011. By comparison, in nearby Westchester County, the figure was 18 percent.

Basic economics

Gul Tiryaki-Sonmez, the chairwoman of Lehman College’s Health Sciences Department, pointed to basic economics as the reason for such discrepancies.

“If you go and look at economically much better areas and the education level is much higher, those people are eating much healthier,” she said.