November 13, 2024
An apple a day keeps the doctor away, the old saying goes, and the average apple is one-third of a pound. Following that logic, as the Solano County Mobile Food Pharmacy delivers its 3 millionth pound of food this week, the county’s doctors should expect some time off shortly.
But the Mobile Food Pharmacy, run by Solano County through a grant from the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation, views fresh food itself as medicine, with fruits and vegetables served from the truck at several county locations across the county help county residents in need grow stronger.
County Supervisors Erin Hannigan and Mitch Mashburn — along with Chairman Anthony Roberts of the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation — visited the truck to celebrate the 3 millionth pound of food being distributed. By the end of this year, the county will have distributed nearly 3.5 million pounds, Hannigan said, all due to a conversation she had with the chairman about food insecurity in 2016.
“Food is medicine, and so we came up with this concept that we would have a food truck that we would have at our county clinic facilities,” she said. “People would go to their doctor, they would get their ‘food prescription’ and whatever else they needed from their doctor and they could come out and get fresh produce.”
Now, she says, the food is available to all who need it, she. On Wednesday, the truck was handing out bags of apples, pears, onions, yellow potatoes and a variety of other vegetables to all who came by and asked. Hannigan went plant-based in her diet almost six years ago, and she said it has made a huge improvement in her life, and she believes that more people would eat healthy if they had the opportunity to eat healthy.
“It’s really about putting food in people’s homes so that we’re reducing food insecurity and so that people have access to healthy food,” Hannigan said.
Mashburn said that the tonnage of food distributed through the truck over its five-year lifespan has been the weight of 10 average single-family homes or the weight of two of the largest types of Union Pacific locomotives. For thousands of years, he says, the Yocha Dehe Wintun have been stewards of the land and providers for all the people in the county and, despite the hardship they have endured, continue to have a spirit of service to all who live here.
“We owe the Patwin people, the Yocha Dehe people a thank you for putting this truck together and the food bank for putting this food together and getting it out to our community,” he said.
Competing with fast food and processed options in the open market is really difficult, she says, but with the abundance of crops grown in and around Solano County the issue is particularly stark here. Mashburn agrees, noting that having a decentralized way to provide those goods like the truck helps everyone reach fresh food, not just those who can drive to a Farmers Market and afford it.
“We have areas in this county that are essentially a food desert,” Mashburn said, “where it’s very hard for them to get to food and very hard for them to get nutritious food.”
Roberts said the partnership forged with the county by his community for this project has flourished into an impactful and powerful thing for all of Solano County. He’s proud to hit this milestone, which he never would have dreamed of when the project began.
“It’s just a huge milestone, it’s a milestone we’re proud to be a partner of and to partner with the program on,” he said. “I think to be able to hit the milestone during Native American Month has a super impactful meaning for us, and I don’t know that we ever imagined that we would get where we are.”
While an apple a day may not literally be putting any Solano County healthcare professionals out of a job, Hannigan reiterated that fresh food has very real medical impacts in the lives of all Solano County residents, particularly those in need.
“We’ll have people living longer healthier lives and spending more time with the people they love,” she said.
By Nick McConnell
Vallejo Times-Herald
An apple a day
https://www.timesheraldonline.com/2024/11/13/an-apple-a-day/