Divine Lipscomb refuses to shop for groceries in Hunts Point. The young father, who moved to the neighborhood two and a half years ago, was disgusted by the meat and produce in the only supermarket in the neighborhood, which he said is overpriced and often rotting.

“Their fresh veggies aren’t fresh,” said Lipscomb. “The meat is more grey than red.”

That’s why Lipscomb took at job as a health educator at Health Outcomes Through Peer Education, or HOPE, a drop-in health outreach center on Hunts Point Avenue created by Urban Health Plan. One of the group’s main focuses is to promote healthy eating habits in a neighborhood that has very poor ones.

Hunts Point has long had a nutritional deficit, despite being home to the country’s largest wholesale produce market. Finding fresh fruits, vegetables, and wholes grains among the neighborhood’s many fast food restaurants and bodegas has long been a challenge. Recently, however, several community groups have had enough and are starting initiatives to provide residents with healthier options, but in a neighborhood with more fried foods than veggies, many residents are apathetic over what they eat.

Over the past few decades, more and more bastions of unhealthy eating have popped up in the area, reflecting recent investment into the once-troubled neighborhood by fast-food giants. Storefronts offering fried chicken, burgers, and pizza dominate the area’s main streets, Hunts Point Avenue and Southern Boulevard, and you’re more likely to see someone carrying a bottle of soda rather than a bottle of water while walking down than the street. As a result, heart disease is a leading cause of death and hospitalization, a quarter of residents are obese, and the area has nearly double the diabetes rates compared to the rest of the city, according to the city’s community health report.

“Obesity is a very, very big problem in Hunts Point,” said Santana. “Some people come in here wanting to lose weight. The problem is access and affordability,” said Santana.

The lone healthy option is Pico’s Juice Bar, which offers juices and smoothies made from fresh fruits and vegetables. Pico’s is also the only place in the area that Ruth Santana, the coordinator of Project HOPE, says she will buy lunch.

But apathy is also a huge problem. While working at her storefront office, Ruth Santana often glances towards the window, hoping to see someone she recognizes walking by. Santana believes that if she doesn’t grab people from off the street, they won’t come in.

“I know that guy!” Santana shouted out on Tuesday as she bounded out the door. She began to tell the man about healthy eating choices, the dangers of too much sugar, and about the workshops her organization is running on to combat obesity. The man walked away, promising to come back.

Convincing residents to come to their healthy eating workshops, aimed at both adults and children, has been an uphill battle for HOPE, which also runs asthma and HIV-related education programs. The sessions, which utilize visual aids such as yellow gelatinous mounds representing pounds of fat and bottles a quarter-full of sugar showing the amount of it in the typical soda, have been effective—for those that have attended them.

“People are surprised and go ‘Oh! Wow!’” said Santana about people’s reaction to the visual aids. “Are they buying less soda? Hopefully. We have some families that stop buying it. But everyone who participates has the info to make a better choice.”

Still, making decisions about eating healthier food is a lot easier when there’s a Whole Foods around the corner. Associated Grocery Store, the only grocery store in Hunts Point proper, is certainly no Whole Foods. It has a produce section that’s about as big as its soda section. Fine Fare, on nearby East 163rd Street in Longwood, offers a greater variety of produce, but also has a huge shelf in its butcher section devoted to breaded and battered meat. This is the kind of lax grocery store standards that upsets Lipscomb.

“Even when I didn’t have my car, I’d get in a cab and go somewhere else to shop,” he said. “Some people ain’t so lucky.”

On Tuesday, Associated Grocery’s produce section was chock-full of browning bananas, severely wrinkled grape tomatoes, a few expired bags of lettuce, and bags of carrots that were rotting and black at both ends. Most shoppers skipped past the rotting veggies and checked out with boxes and cans of processed foods. One woman said she just didn’t care about vegetables, and pushed her cart toward the frozen food section.

The store’s staff doesn’t seem to notice any problem with the produce.

“People here are just looking for rice, fruits like plantains, and juice,” said Alex Felix, a neighborhood resident who works at Associated. “People around here all come to this supermarket, we always have fresh merchandise.”

When shown the subpar fruits and veggies, Felix swore that they’d be removed from the shelf and replaced that day, but that some of the rotted produce still sold.

“Some people buy rotten bananas and stuff,” he said. “We put it at a lower price, some people can’t afford it otherwise.”

The affordability of fresh and healthy food is a huge obstacle in a neighborhood that’s wracked with poverty, but one that some are trying to obliterate. Last month, Heather Mills, the model and ex-wife of Paul McCartney, donated $1 million of vegan food to Hunts Point, some of which was given away for free as plant-based meatless patties at a recent community barbecue, where most people just thought they were eating regular meat

The rest of it is going to be given away by the Hunts Point Alliance for Children, which is hoping to distribute both veggie-based fake meat and fresh produce on Mills’ dollar through multiple venues, including local community groups such as HOPE, at neighborhood schools, and by setting up “healthy cafés.” The group is still trying to pin down a produce provider from the Hunts Point Market, which has largely ignored the neighborhood’s dearth of fresh food.

“We’re working with what the community wants, and what’s most beneficial to them,” said Jill Roche, an HPAC director working on the project.

Even The Point, the popular arts-based community center, is hopping on the fresh food bandwagon. The center is hosting Kelston Bascom, a local chef, who is setting up his own healthy café in its kitchen.

But free healthy food may not be enough to change long-ingrained unhealthy habits said Chanel Reid, who has lived in the area since the summer and has spent a lot of time here before then.
“I’d definitely try it,” she said of Mills’ vegan food. “Free is a wonderful word. But people are afraid of change. They don’t actually realize what they’re doing. People here are to negative and pessimistic to give healthier food a chance.”

Reid was one of ten people on HOPE’s weekly healthy eating walk, led on Thursday by Lipscomb, who brought participants to the bi-weekly farmers market that runs in Raul Del Valle Square, across the Bruckner Expressway, in nearby Longwood. Lipscomb discussed healthy eating habits with the walkers—all women, some with children—and then gave each of them a few two dollar “health bucks” to spend at the market.

Damaris Lopez, 33, who has lived in Hunts Point all her life, was on the walk with two of her three children.

“The only healthy food is at the farmer’s market,” she said. “We need healthy food for our children.”

After about twenty minutes of browsing and buying at the market, Lipscomb rounded up the participants so they could go back to HOPE and sign up for workshops.

Only two of the original ten ended up back with him—a sign of the neighborhood’s indifference and HOPE’s continuing challenge.