Healthy Eating and Healthy Living

It is well known that healthy eating can drastically reduce an individual’s chance of having major health problems, boast one’s immune system, and lead to a longer, happier and overall healthier life. In 2017 Forbes published an article titled, “How Eating Healthy Can Actually Make You a More Effective Leader,” in which the author presented evidence that eating healthier helps to create in an individual some of the best attributes of good leaders. Eating healthy not only makes an individual healthier, but it helps to make them more successful too.

In recent years people have pointed to the rise in diabetes, heart disease, and other major health problems amongst low-income individuals as part of the systemic problems in our society that disadvantage individuals based on their income and situation at birth. It is often pointed out that the cheapest food is the least healthy food and places that sell healthy produce are often harder for low-income families to get to. Many low-income areas are what people refer to as food deserts, areas which lack grocery stores where people can buy healthy food. And for a single mother who has two kids and needs to take the bus to get to a grocery store to buy fresh produce and meat, it can be a whole lot easier for her to just walk to the convenient store on the corner and buy some friend chicken and a bag of chips. No doubt eating healthy can seem harder to many people, especially people on a tight budget and living in areas with no grocery store nearby. But the long-held assumption that unhealthy food is the cheapest food is not entirely true. A bag of chips costs $2.50, while 2 cucumbers cost $1.98. A bag of pork rinds costs $2.29, while a head of iceberg lettuce costs $1.49. Not to mention that being in good health at the age of 60 is a lot cheaper than having diabetes and heart complications.

For low-income families, it can often seem harder to eat healthy, and society needs to do a better job ensuring everyone has access to healthier food and good healthcare. For low-income families, eating and living healthier requires a personal commitment and an individual choice. For society, when it comes to ensuring equal access to good health, it is not just about health treatment, but promoting health through proper nutrition and ensuring everyone has access to healthy food.

At Pathways, we are pleased to offer all of that. If you live in the Petersburg area and have limited access to healthy food, Pathways receives shipments each week of fresh produce that we distribute to the community for free. Everyone month we receive boxes of canned goods and chicken which we distribute for free. We also have a free health clinic where we focus not just on treating health problems but preventing health problems with healthy eating and healthy living. At Pathways, we focus on building pathways to success. Making the choice to eat healthy and live a healthy lifestyle, is a great start down the pathway to success, and we are happy to work with people to build those paths.

If you would like to support the work we do, visit our website to learn more about our work and how you can help, https://www.pathways-va.org/. If you or someone you know would like to utilize the services we provide, call us at (804) 862-1104.