Khawar Jamil, the owner of Family Food Market, says 20 to 30 customers a day come in to buy produce, some paying with cash, some with FreshCrate coupons distributed at a nearby free-food pantry.
FreshCrate, part of Loyola’s neighborhood outreach efforts, is just one of several programs that Baltimore nonprofits, universities and city government have sponsored over the past 15 years to combat a national obesity and diabetes epidemic by bringing bring more healthy foods to low-income neighborhoods where diet-related illness is highest and healthy food choices are most scarce. Now Johnson buys fresh fruit three blocks from home, on the western edge of Govans, a neighborhood where nearly half of the kids live in poverty. But that changed five years ago when nearby Loyola University established the FreshCrate program, using its food-service company to sell produce at cost to five small stores on York Road. Johnson had long grown used to leaving the city once or twice a month to get fresh fruits and vegetables, paying high prices and carting them back to her apartment by bus. At least, not too many places around this part of North Baltimore.
