Healthy Living Brooklyn
combats the insidious effects of fast-food culture on the health of low-income urban families by providing a cohesive and accessible program that both educates community members about nutritional lifestyles and helps them acquire healthy, organic food. HLB is a dynamic and flexible collective program that combines the products of organic food stores, co-ops, CSAs, urban and local farms with the services of nutritionists, educators, chefs, and even cooking TV shows. The goal is to create a mutually beneficial environment for all participants that engenders a large-scale turn away from the destructive reliance on fast and processed food and embraces healthy living. HLB members should receive discounts at participating stores. Increased demand for CSA and co-op membership will boost CSA popularity and lower prices. A growing membership could eventually use empty lots to establish more local organic farms like Red Hook Farm. The opportunities for growth are high.
By incorporating TV cooking shows, concert/events featuring celebrity chefs, and generally creating a multileveled platform to combat the urban obesity/nutrition problem, HLB is creative.
The community-enhancing aspects of this program are clear. Aside from the health benefits of promoting nutritional living, this organization brings people together in different ways: farming, CSA meetings, and general discussion of what has become a community-wide problem in many urban neighborhoods. Over the long term, healthier communities would reflect in lower insurance rates for everyone.
This is designed as a flexible and cooperative win-win program beneficial to participating outlets and the community overall. The goal should be to offer ‘packages’ available for different consumers at varying prices and product combinations. It should be expandable to include pilates/yoga and other services that espouse healthy living. HLB members should receive discounts at participating stores. Increased demand for CSA and co-op membership will boost CSA popularity and lower prices. Eventually a core of satisfied members there will push for the development of more number small-scale urban farms like Red Hook Farm.
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