In just nine months since it first hit the streets, Indiana University Health’s mobile produce truck, Garden on the Go, celebrated its 10,000th sale this week. The achievement makes it one of the fastest-growing mobile produce trucks in the nation.
The truck, a unique nonprofit-for-profit partnership with the produce and grocery delivery company Green B.E.A.N. Delivery, visits low-income Indianapolis neighborhoods, year-round, with affordable, healthy produce and accepts food stamps (SNAP/EBT), cash, credit and debit.
“To hit 10,000 sales in just nine months clearly indicates that there is a demand for healthy foods in our neighborhoods with limited access to fresh produce and other healthful products,” said Ron Stiver, senior vice president for Engagement & Public Affairs with IU Health. “IU Health looks forward to growing Garden on the Go in 2012 and to developing additional innovative programs to confront the dual epidemic of diabetes and obesity.”
Garden on the Go began with 12 stops in May 2011, before expanding to 16 stops in the fall. Its sales numbers are also well ahead of where other mobile produce trucks throughout the nation were at the same point in their development thanks to a loyal shopper base.
Indiana Avenue Apartments resident Della Fox – who has been shopping on the truck since it first started visiting her building last May – says she’s already noticed a difference in her health. Fox’s blood sugar, for example, has dropped from 200 to 130 during that span.
“It’s certainly changed my life,” said Fox, 68, of Garden on the Go. “Since I’ve been shopping on the truck, I’ve noticed my health has been better, my energy level is better and, overall, I feel good.”
IU Health hopes to discover more stories like Fox’s through a forthcoming research project administered by theIndiana University School of Medicine’s Department of Public Health. The project will follow 100 shoppers for six months starting in mid-March, tracking A1C (diabetes measurement), body mass index, blood pressure, height and weight.
This comes on the heels of a 2011 survey that found more than 44 percent of participating Garden on the Go shoppers have diabetes, well above the 9.6 percent average in the Indianapolis-Carmel metropolitan statistical area, where the shoppers live.
In addition to the research project, as part of its educational mission in 2012, Garden on the Go will be expanding its focus starting in March to providing instruction around how to prepare healthy meals through free recipe samplings and cards.
