FREMONT, Calif. -- Convenience store retailer Vintners Distributors Inc. is among several companies and six college campuses that have announced new commitments to fight childhood obesity with the Partnership for a Healthier America (PHA).
Vintners, which owns and operates more than 120 convenience stores with 12 Loop Neighborhood c-stores in California, has committed to making healthier options easier at all of its current and future stores. This includes offering healthier products, increasing affordability of those products, increasing marketing and promotion of healthier items, offering bicycle racks for its patrons and bike storage for its employees where possible and providing a 20% discount to employee purchases of fresh fruits and vegetables.
Fremont, Calif.-based Vintners was founded in 1978. The company develops real estate and owns and operates gas stations with convenience stores and car washes. Vintners also has a wholesale division that delivers fuel to about 60 dealer locations in the market, but the company has no other influence on products or operations for those locations. Stores have been branded by the fuel name, either Shell or Chevron, but in 2013, the chain introduced the Loop Neighborhood brand.
"The leaders, companies, universities and colleges that made a commitment today are taking a stance against childhood obesity at a moment in time when we must step forward and not back," said PHA CEO Lawrence Soler. "Today, with the help of Vintners Distributors, Blue Sea Development, Urban Ventures, Vitus Group and colleges and universities across the country, we are moving closer to our goal of making healthier choices easier for parents, students and families across the country."
The Partnership for a Healthier America is devoted to working with the private sector to ensure the health of our nation's youth by solving the childhood obesity crisis. In 2010, PHA was created in conjunction with, but independent from First Lady Michelle Obama's Let's Move! effort. PHA is a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that is led by some of the nation's most respected health and childhood obesity experts. PHA brings together public, private and nonprofit leaders to broker commitments and develop strategies to end childhood obesity. It works with unbiased third parties to monitor and publicly report on the progress its partners are making.
The First Lady, honorary PHA chair, spoke at its 2015 Building a Healthier Future Summit on February 26. She touted the efforts of PHA and Let's Move!, saying, "Over the past five years, we have truly changed the culture around healthy eating and living in this country."
She praised healthier foods in daycare centers, school and afterschool programs; the increased availability of groceries in food deserts--healthier groceries because food and beverage makes have reduced calories; and healthier menus at chain restaurants.
"For the past five years, we have been addressing this issue from every angle. And taken together, these changes are finally starting to have an impact. Childhood obesity rates have finally stopped rising, and obesity rates are actually falling among our youngest children," she said. "But let's be clear: While the progress we've made is impressive, it's also incredibly fragile. We are just beginning to move the needle on this issue. We're just beginning to see the change that you've been fighting for decades."
Addressing negative reports about school lunch changes, she accused "special interests" of "lobbying Congress, launching media campaigns. And even today, some folks are still arguing that we just can't afford to serve our kids healthy food, that it's too expensive. And unfortunately, these tactics often work because that's what gets headlines these days--conflict, negativity, fear. So that's why you won't see many news stories today about the success of the school lunch improvements; about how 90% of schools have successfully implemented the new standards or about how many kids are happily eating those healthier meals."
She continued, "So ultimately, that's on us. We can't just sit back and feel virtuous because we're doing the right thing for our kids. We have to get in the game. We need to be out there every day tweeting, instagramming, myth busting. We need to use every tool at our disposal--social media, marketing and advertising, even some old-fashioned community organizing."
Click here to read the full text of Michelle Obama's remarks.
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