Walk Score announced the ranking of the best and worst U.S. cities for access to food. The ranking measures access to healthy food by calculating the percent of people in a city who can walk to a grocery store in 5 minutes.

CEI and Wholesome Wave collaborated on providing business development assistance and “patient capital” to Farm Fresh Rhode Island.  The financing deal allows Farm Fresh Rhode Island to nearly double its produce storage and significantly expand its Market Mobile and Veggie Box programs, which enable thousands of families to access local, fresh food from dozens of family farms across New England.

The Local Initiatives Support Corporation New York City (LISC NYC) has launched a three-year pilot program to help low-income families in New York live longer and healthier by expanding access to healthy food in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Called Communities for Healthy Food NYC, the new program connects to broader LISC NYC efforts to revitalize struggling communities and improve overall quality of life. It focuses both on locating healthy food outlets in places without them and educating residents about nutrition, food preparation and overall health.

U.S. Bancorp Community Development Corporation (USBCDC) announced the grand opening of Northgate Gonzalez Markets in Inglewood, Calif. The $7.6 million supermarket received more than $2.5 million in new markets tax credit (NMTC) equity from USBCDC and a $4 million term loan from NCB Capital Impact and The California Endowment

Growing Home is one of Chicago's larger urban farming projects, much of it located in Englewood, one of the city's poorest neighborhoods. This article and photo essay discusses the idea that urban farms have less to do with providing healthy food and are more about a reclamation of sorts, taking ownership of a community and the daily lives of the people.

Greater prosperity in Bradford and the rest of Vermont will require better access to health care, food, workforce development and education.That was the conclusion of a local panel of experts, as well as many audience members who attended the first Campaign for Vermont (CFV) public forum. CFV is a statewide, independent and non-partisan “ideas campaign.” It now has more than 350 partners, and has published prosperity-minded position papers on energy, education, health care and employment.

It has become an article of faith among some policy makers and advocates, including Michelle Obama, that poor urban neighborhoods are food deserts, bereft of fresh fruits and vegetables. But two new studies have found something unexpected. Such neighborhoods not only have more fast food restaurants and convenience stores than more affluent ones, but more grocery stores, supermarkets and full-service restaurants, too. And there is no relationship between the type of food being sold in a neighborhood and obesity among its children and adolescents.

The hottest trend in the grocery business might just be setting up shop in food deserts. Since 2010, when Rahm Emanuel adopted the issue during his mayoral campaign, big retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Walgreen Co. have made well-publicized commitments to build stores in underserved neighborhoods in Chicago and other urban centers.

While Mississippi is ripe with green scenery, the Partnership for a Healthy Mississippi says a huge slice of the Mississippi Delta has too few grocery stores. This is also the case in some urban areas of Mississippi experts say this limits access to healthy foods.

After decades of rising childhood obesity rates, several American cities are reporting their first declines.The trend has emerged in big cities like New York and Los Angeles, as well as smaller places like Anchorage, Alaska, and Kearney, Neb. The state of Mississippi has also registered a drop, but only among white students.