Healthy Body, Healthy Mind

As you may notice around the city of Terre haute, you don’t really see that many quick healthy selections to get food. And with a typical college students busy schedule quick and easy food is always the go to, given how long it takes to prepare and cook good balanced meals. But many people try to stay as fit as possible and eat the best they can but sometimes after staying up all night studying the only true option you have is fast food place that is open all night, unless you are willing to whip up a quick meal in your own kitchen. But with the late-night studying and people that procrastinate on homework until late that night, it mostly consists of vending machine snacks such as chips, chocolate and or sugary beverages.

The one group of people I tried to talk to first was mainly athletes. Because me being a former athlete here at Indiana state I know how the crunch for food can be sometimes, but also making sure you are putting the right food into your body. I talked to Katrell Moss, current linebacker at Indiana state to see what his daily food hunt or meal plan looks like for a normal practice day. He wakes up around 8am, uses his meal plan for a swipe at the Towers or the Quads which he thinks has SOME good selections but not all of it is good quality food. Katrell thinks there should be good, fresh, organic selections in there. He questioned why there wasn’t egg whites in particular, having the

option between, turkey sausage and bacon and regular sausage and bacon. From there he goes to two classes back to back, before having an hour before his next class. So sometimes he goes to grab a snack at the campus cupboard in the commons. Every line is usually fairly long at this point in the day and his options are Burger King, pizza hut, taco bell or sub connection, a couple hours before football practice, those probably are not the best options to fuel your body and he doesn’t want to spend a lot of time waiting in line so the cupboard is the best choice and they offer healthy food and snacks in there as well. But the only thing is, they are way over-priced. As you can see a small cup of grapes is $2.69, when you can usually go to any market and buy a pound of grapes for

less than that price. About $1.99 is the price at Kroger and Walmart. They also sell already made salads, such as Caesar salads but they are almost 6$. I understand eating healthy can sometimes be costly but on a college campus where some if not most students are already working their way through school, that can be a bit much for a quick bite to eat. Katrell says sometimes he has to think about if he wants to save a couple extra dollars and go for some bags of chips or a sugary granola bar to get him through to practice or workouts, especially towards the end of the month when stipendmoney begins to run thin. But for the commons as a whole, he believes sub connection is probably one of the better choices, but claims it never really sits well in his stomach during practice or a workout , “something about the Sodexo food.” Says Moss. He thinks maybe adding in a subway instead of sub connection would be more beneficial and give you an opportunity to eat fresh, (pun intended). Also, Gage Lackey current Indiana state Tight End who came all the way out here from Riverside California said, “In West you know there are a lot of Division 1 schools that not only have better food selections but also the area surrounding the school as well.” He explained how there is this place called Mad Greens which is set up just like a subway or Qdoba, but with salads. You can mix different meats and veggies to give you the nutrition you may need for your practice or workout later on that day. But even for those who are just students but try to workout on a regular basis, it is still hard to find good, organic food throughout Terre haute. Because I notice there are a lot of students here that participate in body competitions where they work out a lot and shred body fat and along with that comes a lot of clean eating and meal prepping. The only place to buy a lot of organic food in Terre haute that also has decent prices on produce is Fresh Thyme. But there have been a lot of complaints about how far that is, so sometimes as a college student, time can be very limited. Gas can be very limited for those that do have a car because some may not. Fresh Thyme is located way south on 3rd street right next to Sam’s Club and behind Cheddars. And whit all the open space and empty lots around Indiana state, I think it would be very resourceful to put either another one of those close or follow through with market or business they were working on building called Terre Foods. Terre foods is a cooperative market that is a member owned, whole foods grocery store. They want it to be open seven days a week and accessible for the Wabash valley community and provide local, organic whole foods and products at a fair price. But the problem they are having is finding the space to open the store, here is a condensed letter from their president of 2016 discussing some of the problems they have been facing:

FOR THIS YEAR’S ANNUAL LETTER, I want to address the issue of site selection

and acquisition. To say this is the most asked question regarding our cooperative

would be an understatement.

2016 was a year of many serious challenges toward the ultimate goal of

opening the store. Even if it hasn’t been particularly apparent at times, the Terre

Foods Cooperative Market leadership teams, the Working Groups, Steering

Committee, and Board of Directors, have been actively pursuing a viable

location for the store. To that end, I want to discuss some of the particulars

in regards to finding an adequate location and give updates on what has

transpired in the past year.

We started the year with a large step back. In 2015, the Board of Directors had

been in the early stages of lease discussion with a very positive developer. That

project would have literally been in the heart of downtown. Unfortunately, after

working on understanding each other’s needs, bringing in our design consultant,

and preparing the timeline for a capital campaign; the developer had a change

of heart. After spending so much energy on that project, it was demoralizing to

the board to have come so close to success, only to have to restart the process.

Ultimately that set back was our gain, as we learned more about negotiations,

property development, contracts, and store design that will benefit our next

round of discussions. It also helped us rethink how we were approaching the

site selection process. We restructured the Site Selection Committee and

invited new members to join in the property search who are knowledgeable in

development, realty, and government bureaucracy with direct knowledge about

the changing Terre Haute development and realty landscape.

The Site Selection Committee is now in the process of identifying new

properties, and revisiting some that we had previously vetted. The city has

changed since our last market analysis — we have new competition, and the

market is changing with new developments in the downtown and surrounding

areas. Another aspect that I think will be helpful to the membership is in the specifics

of what makes a suitable location for the store. There are two parts to that goal,

the area the store is located, and the suitability of the site itself.

In the past, the membership expressed a strong desire for a store located in the

downtown corridor. However, our last member survey identified that the overall

desire to see the store open was greater than having the store located directly in

downtown. We are still committed to a store that meets the needs of downtown;

however, we are also looking at suitable sites that are in the areas identified by

membership as acceptable.

Chris Weber

Board President

Terre Foods Cooperative Market

Since then, Terre foods has a new president in charge by the name of T.J. Hellemann, who is originally from Chelsea, Massachusetts and after living there for about 9 years, his wife had gotten a job in Terre Haute and had to move out here. He had also noticed that Terre haute is kind of a food desert when he arrived, where there is a couple miles between all different types of food locations and grocery stores and how far they are from the downtown areas of Terre haute and Indiana states campus. So, he said Terre foods was something that sprouted up in the living when talking about how Terre haute is food desert because according to maps,(https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-access-research-atlas/go-to-the-atlas/) all of the area around campus is considered to be low income and low access areas so they try to put most of the main grocery stores in between but more towards the higher income areas. So, they had figured that opening up a community grocery store near the downtown area on good quality organic foods would be a great idea! They were originally wanting to open up where the footers pizza place is on 7th and Poplar street but they had a setback of 9 months where they needed to do a lot of regrouping because regulations needed to get it started. While on the phone he told me about a Blueberry festival they host on Larry Bird way, where they have tons of great organic food out like their organic blueberries for fundraising to help get the store opened, but one of the problems was that it was during the summer so a lot of students go home and not any show up so students, including myself are very unaware. So, I mentioned them talking to Indiana state and hopefully see if they can come set up a couple stands for a few days and bring some awareness to what they are trying to accomplish. And he said they are actually in the middle of some talks to hopefully do that sometime next school year.

I think the Terre haute community as well as students at Indiana state should be aware of this to hopefully try and push for this market to finally be opened up. I think it would be very beneficial to everyone in the long run so students and people located in the downtown area more accessibility to good quality organic food at an affordable price for those trying to stay in tip top shape and maintain those spring break and summer bodies they want. Healthy Body, Healthy Mind!

����)