The lack of healthy food options in the Douglass community has convinced the Memphis City School students to try some alternatives, one of which is planting a community garden in front of Douglass High School.

A count by The Teen Appeal shows that there are more than 26 fast food restaurants less than five miles away from the community center.  These include McDonald’s Church’s Chicken and several pizza places. Yet there is only one farmer’s market,  within five miles.

            Also, there are no grocery stores within five miles, and the only place to buy any type of food item is at Family Dollar, or which there are 12 in the community. 

            For this community, it is almost impossible to get to fresh and healthy foods without a car, and even with a car it is still a considerable drive.

            “There is not enough fresh produce and health foods in the area,” said April Jones, a senior at Douglass High School.

            April said that the lack of health food options is an issue for young people growing up in Douglass, many of whom want to make healthy choices but find it difficult.           

“People want to complain about how many obese children there are in the neighborhood and (how they are) not making healthy choices, but it’s hard, especially if a family has no car and small income,” April said.

Bertram Williams, a Douglass resident who now attends the University of Memphis, said he believes part of the problem is the fast food restaurant owners.

“Fast food restaurants know what they are doing when they put their restaurants into a community,” Williams said. “They will target the area where they know they are going to get the most service, and this is usually the low income areas. They know that they can sell a hamburger cheaper than a salad, and people will have to settle for that, unless they go farther out.”

Williams said most families do not sit at a table and eat dinner every night so the convenience of fast food is what draws people to the more unhealthy choices.

‘Now a day there is barely time for meals to be cooked and a lot of times in these communities, there is not always a parent that is home every night to cook,” Williams said.

The Douglass High School garden is one way the schools are trying to combat the problem. The garden is in honor of former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt. The people in the community have the chance to get fresh food from the garden and that is a great way to try some healthy food.

In “Brainwashed,” author Tom Burrell offered statistics on what unhealthy food choices can do to a community. In 2005, he determined that blacks were 1.4 times as likely to be obese as non-Hispanic white people in the United States, and many of the low income areas of the country are dominated by African-Americans.

 “African-Americans are 1.6 times more likely to have diabetes than whites, non- Latino Americans and more than twice as likely to suffer its most severe consequences. About 2.7 million blacks over 20 have the disease,” Burrell wrote in his book.

Also, African Americans women have the highest rate of being overweight or obese when compared to other groups in the country, Burrell reported.