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Why Two Rappers Are Bringing Smoothies To Their Neighborhood
HEALTH
Why Two Rappers Are Bringing Smoothies To Their Neighborhood
BY SAM P.K. COLLINSSEP 2, 2015 3:19PM
CREDIT: AP PHOTO/DAVID ZALUBOWSKI
For more than 20 years, hip-hop artists Jadakiss and Styles P spat bars about what they saw in Yonkers, New York, a low-income community north of the Bronx. However, their latest venture, a local chain of juice bars, allows them to not only be neighborhood griots, but agents of change.
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Since its launch nearly four years ago, Juices for Life has served Yonkers residents fruit smoothies prepared from whole fruits and tailored to provide the body with nutrients. The storefront, which Jadakiss and Styles P partly own, recently expanded operations to two other low-income neighborhoods in the Big Apple.
In an interview with Elite Daily, the duo said they want to provide healthy food options that can help their neighbors stave off chronic illness. They also delved into dietary changes they made in their lives.
“Growing up in Yonkers, New York we didn’t know what was good for us,” Jadakiss said in the video. “If you walk down the block in the hood it’s nearly impossible to find something healthy to put in your body. We were consuming what was made available to us… The juice bars are opened in the hood on purpose to educate our people on health awareness,” Jadakiss said.
Juices for Life’s expansion follows lawmakers’ efforts to connect New York residents with healthy food choices, impose dietary restrictions, and reverse persistent health disparities.
In 2013, then- New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg attempted to pass a ban on large sugary drinks. The city’s highest court, however, blocked its implementation last year to the chagrin of child health advocates. In March, the New York City Department of Health adopted new rules for licensed daycare centers, including reduction in sedentary time and a ban on the consumption of sugar-laden fruit juice for children under the age of two. The federal government has jumped in too, doling out more than $500 million to businesses to encourage them to set up shop in food deserts, areas devoid of sources of fruits and vegetables, as part of its Healthy Food Financing Initiative.
These policy moves come amid a focus on obesity and its connection to food insecurity, defined as limits to access to adequate food sources because of lack of money and other resources. While rates of childhood obesity have declined in New York City in aggregate, they haven’t dropped among children of color living in low-income enclaves. Experts tie obesity to an increased cancer risk, with studies tying excess weight to aggressive breast cancer in postmenopausal women and prostate cancer in older men. Shedding pounds and maintaining a healthy lifestyle would require, in part, a balanced diet of bread, fruits and vegetables, dairy, meat, and fish.
That might not be a possibility for Yonkers residents, many of whom count among the more than 49 million people across the United States living in areas where full-service grocery stores, farmers markets, and healthy food providers are more than a mile away. Additionally, some low-income Americans may not have the proper cooking facilities and reliable transportation that would allow them to improve their diet. Lack of food choices ultimately leave those living in low-income neighborhoods no choice but to purchase cheap, prepackaged food, high in sugar and sodium, from convenience stores and gas stations.
The fast food industry and sugar industry further exploits this group by targeting children with aggressive marketing tactics -– including the placement of indoor play areas at food franchises, display of kids’ meals toys, and advertisements with movie characters. These influences play a part in shaping food preferences, which can be hard to shake, as suggested in a study that designated that education level as indicators of variety of food intake.
Even so, Jadakiss and Styles P say the ongoing public health emergency in their community stems from lack of access to fruits and vegetables. Jerry Brown, president and CEO of Brown’s Super Stores, Inc. and partner in the Juices for Life endeavor, shares their sentiments, saying that food access shapes preference.
“You don’t know the options aren’t good,” Styles P added. “Those are good options to you.”
Jadakiss and Styles are two-thirds of the 1990s hip-hop group The L.O.X., known for their collaboration with then-Sean “Puffy” Combs on “All About the Benjamins” and later their platinum album Money, Power & Respect. The group later went on to release their own solo projects before reuniting in 2012 for an album with Wu Tang Clan.
