His researchers are tracking sales and interviewing customers to measure whether diets change. But the real measure of the program's success, the rates of chronic diseases, won't be clear for years.
There are about 800 corner stores in Baltimore. Many lack any kind of refrigeration, except for cases to cool bottles of soda, so selling produce is almost impossible. Instead, the stores offer racks of processed food, heavily marketed by the manufacturers and sold cheaply to a captive audience.
"As a city and as a country, we don't promote healthy foods," said Anne Palmer, program director at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, which funded the first phase of the Healthy Stores Project. "Changing people's tastes in food is one of the most difficult things to do. It's so wrapped up in what you've grown up with. People don't eat for health, necessarily. They eat because that's what satisfies them. It tastes good."
At Melvin's Market on West Baltimore Street, owner Melvin A. Brown has stocked more whole-wheat bread since he joined the Hopkins project last fall. With some promotion, sales of the bread have gone up from 10 loaves a week to 20 or 25. But he sells about 400 loaves of white bread each week.
He's offering more turkey products in place of pork and beef, and he carries 10 low-sugar cereals, as well as skim, 1 percent and 2 percent fat milk. He said senior citizens with restricted diets buy the foods, but kids are a harder sell.
"They're eating the junk food," he said, wearing a red apron and blue ball cap behind the counter of the store he's owned for 35 years. "Especially when they're spending their money, they want that sweet stuff - chips, ice cream, cakes."
The expansion of the Healthy Stores Project, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, will focus on stores near schools and recreation centers to target children 10 to 14. The project has identified the foods that provide the most fat, sugar and calories in children's diets, and will be promoting alternatives. That means flavored water instead of the sweetened Kool-Aid-type drinks, trail mix and granola bars instead of cakes, fruits instead of candy.
Not all store owners agree to participate. With limited space, and operating on a thin profit margin, some owners worry that the healthful foods won't sell or will perish quickly. They are reluctant to take the risk.
