Eating healthy: easier said than done
This is the first post of my “Perspectives” series, in which I work with others to describe public health issues from their points of view. This blog comes from the perspective of Alina Fortunato, an Afro-Latinx senior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Ninety-eighth percentile. When this statistic comes to mind, one can’t help but think of excellence. Well, as a child I was excellent at being big. I was in the 98th percentile for height and weight and looked twice my age simply because of my size.
Coming from a Dominican family wrought with health problems (it took my uncle’s cancer diagnosis to start a conversation about healthy food), my mother was always aware of my size, as was I, and she made sure to keep an eye on my eating habits. I can imagine that she was trying to prevent me from developing Type II Diabetes or becoming obese like many of my family members, who have subsisted off of a consistent diet of white rice and meat for their entire lives, and who are unfortunately not alone in their health issues. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2015–16, 47.0% of Hispanics and 46.8% of non-Hispanic blacks were obese, the highest rates out of all ethnic groups measured. I was lucky to have a mother who read enough and did enough research to know how to help me. Many of my extended family members didn’t have someone like her. Many of my other family members moved to the States well into adulthood and are not fluent in English. Perhaps they have had a hard time finding information on eating better in Spanish; in my experience, the majority of information regarding healthy eating habits has been in English. In contrast, my mother immigrated to the US when she was eight years old and is completely English/Spanish bilingual, so accessing information on healthy habits was easier for her. Additionally, much of my extended family settled in low-income areas in and around New York City, where there weren’t many options for affordable fresh foods. In the US, they also had easy-access to fast food and other cheap junk food that was not available in the Dominican Republic. When I was 7, my mother moved us out-of-state to a suburban middle-income neighborhood, which affected our food choices in a positive way.
As I grew up, my immediate family continued improving how and what we ate, which meant, among other things, drinking green smoothies every day, cutting back on meat consumption, and eating more salads. I simply followed along because mom was calling the shots and I was just the child; I didn’t like some of the changes, but I didn’t have many options. I had a support system and someone I trusted would point me in the right direction. My mother taught me to think of food differently than before.
When transitioning to life on my own, I had a rude awakening regarding how much my mother influenced my eating habits and how expensive it is to eat healthily. When I went to college, I didn’t give much thought as to what or how much I was eating and didn’t have anyone around me making green smoothies every morning. Two semesters later, I saw a picture of myself in the company of the infamous “freshman 15,” but for me, it was the “freshman 20.” As someone who already struggled with her weight and self-image, that realization was more of a wake-up call for me than anything else I had experienced. I had to make some serious changes, not just for aesthetic purposes, but because I want to live a long, healthy life. Since living on my own, I have stopped buying meal plans through the university to save some money. However, the cost of healthy food is still a challenge I face when trying to make better choices at the grocery store. I know buying produce versus processed foods will make me feel better physically, mentally, and emotionally, but sometimes it is much easier on my wallet to buy items that aren’t so good for me but will stretch my money farther. There have even been times when I had to forgo grocery shopping to save some cash.
To address the issue of access to healthy foods a number of programs have popped up in recent years. A few in the Chapel Hill and Carrboro areas are Carolina Cupboard, TABLE, and the community gardens. These programs are working not only to provide community members in need with nutritious, free food, but are also educating the community on food-related public health issues, including food insecurity, obesity, and sustainable farming. Combined with policy changes that bring down the cost of healthy foods and ensure access to nutritious foods in all neighborhoods, programs like these, especially if offered in languages other than English, could change in the way kids like myself grow up, help them start healthy habits early, and positively impact their life-long relationship to food.
