Blogs

The Re/Storing Nashville Leadership Team, comprised of North Nashville, East Nashville and Edgehill residents, meets each Monday afternoon.  Today, we took a field trip!

What does it mean to have affordable healthy food access? For three Nashville neighborhoods (North Nashville/Charlotte Ave., East Nashville/Cayce Place, Edgehill), it usually means finding a ride (via family, friends, neighbors, taxi or bus) to the grocery store. 

The March 27 free community screening of Food, Inc. was huge success!  With over 100 people in the audience, spanning ages, genders and races from across the city, the film was shown in chapters, with time for 2-3 questions between chapters.  The questions ran the gamut from, “How do bodies cope with the ammonia used to clean meat?” to “Where do we find Farmer Freddie’s food?”

Re/Storing Nashville has begun compiling stories from Nashville residents that go the extra mile for healthy food

Most Americans take for granted our ability to get to the grocery store. But many people in Nashville live in areas that are more than a mile to a full-service grocery store, and lack their own means of transportation. 

Over the course of our first year, we've seen and done a lot: vast improvements to Bill Martin's grocery store in East Nashville; begun conversations with MTA/RTA and InShuttle about increaseing direct access to supermarkets from North Nashville, Edgehill and East Nashville; there are whispers of interest from a grocer in the corner of 12th and Wedgewood; engineering students at TSU are creating a vision for a currently vacant grocery the corner of 39th and Clifton;

Earlier this week, while I was getting ready for work, one of my neighbors knocked on my kitchen door to ask if I liked greens.  His were ready to be picked, and he had more than he could eat.  I quickly answered "Yes!" and he said he'd leave a bag for me later that day.

There's been a lot of buzz about the term "food desert."  A food desert is generally described as a low-income urban (or rural) area, where there is little or no access to healthy, affordable foods, often accompanied by a glut of fast food restaurants and convenience stores and a high percentage of residents who do not own a vehicle.