Fresh vegetables and fruits can be surprisingly hard to find in Virginia

Twenty-eight percent of Virginians report having a difficult time finding fresh fruits and vegetables to buy in their community, according to a survey released on Monday at the fourth Weight of the State childhood obesity prevention conference.

May 5, 2015; 9:00 AM • by Capital News Service

Morgan White | Capital News Service

The survey was conducted by the Virginia Foundation for Healthy Youth between March 2014 and March 2015 as part of its Fresh Spot campaign aimed at increasing the availability of fresh fruits and vegetables in the commonwealth.

Members of Y Street, the foundation’s volunteer group for high school students, surveyed more than 2,700 people in 169 Virginian communities. The survey found that the placement of fresh fruits and vegetables in supermarkets often was not conducive to healthier consumer choices.

Almost 78 percent of Virginians surveyed couldn’t recall whether there were fruits and vegetables where they buy most of their food.

“When teens, moms, and adults are really crunched for time, if the fresh fruits and vegetables are in the back of a huge supermarket, we’re less likely to walk in there and get them,” said Margaret-Ann Toms, a Y Street member from Martinsville.

Jordan Wilson, a sophomore at Chesterfield County’s Cosby High School, agreed.

“If it doesn’t look right, if it doesn’t feel right, 90 percent of the time they’re just going to go with what they feel comfortable with, which is fast food,” Wilson said.

Almost 78 percent of Virginians surveyed couldn’t recall whether there were fruits and vegetables where they buy most of their food. But youth and adults did report seeing candy, soda and chips most frequently near the checkout counter.

The survey also found that if given $5 to spend on food, more than half of Virginia’s youth would spend it at a fast-food restaurant or convenience store and that almost 34 percent of household food purchasers must drive at least 15 minutes to purchase fresh produce.

Danny Saggese, the director of marketing for the Virginia Foundation for Healthy Youth, said the Fresh Stop campaign will now try to determine whether the availability of produce is associated with cost.

“The next step of this campaign is to collect more data and to collect more information that we can then do reports on and turn back into the local community, and part of that is the store assessment,” Saggese said.

Y Street youths will be in charge of store assessments to answer whether less healthy food costs less than healthy fresh produce.

The Fresh Spot campaign was launched by Y Street in 2014 and is still in what Saggese calls its infancy stage. Y Street was begun in 2004 by the foundation to raise awareness among high school students about critical health issues such as tobacco and obesity prevention.

Photo by: Martina Troiano