Manhattan Borough President Scott M. Stringer, who released these findings today in a study issued by his office, said that it is time for New York City to directly address large discrepancies in the retail food environments in different neighborhoods.  To that end, the Borough President called on the New York City Department of Health to create a “FoodStat” for every city neighborhood.

“Just as we measure the air quality of different neighborhoods,” said Borough President Stringer, “we should measure the quality of a neighborhood’s retail food environment.  Both have a direct effect on health.  And both can be improved through smart city planning.  Food policy is the new environmental policy, especially in our cities.”

FoodStat is a statistic that measures the availability of healthy food choices in a neighborhood.  The FoodStat ratio is constructed by dividing the number of unhealthy retail food options (fast food restaurants, bodegas) by the number of healthy options (supermarkets and produce vendors).  The higher the FoodStat number, the poorer the food landscape, and the harder it is for residents to find retailers selling fruits, vegetables and other healthy food. You can read related news stories in the New York Post and El Diario.