With more than half the global population now living in urban environments, healthy food markets provide an affordable way to buy food for millions of people. Unfortunately, these markets have also been associated with the spread of disease and food borne illness. The World Health Organization developed a program called Healthy Food Markets to discover and combat healthy problems to enhance the markets vitality.
WHO Initiative
Healthy Food Markets is an initiative by the WHO. It sponsors and implements pilot projects designed to ensure food markets offer communities access to safe and nutritious food. The intention of the project is helping communities come together to identify problems and solutions, as well as work for the common goal of a healthy and safe market.
Importance
The quality of the food available in the places where people carry out their daily activities is one factor that determines the health status of the population. The food choices available close to home, school or work influence your diet. Healthy food markets provide nutritious foods including local fruits and vegetables in a disease-free environment. Access to healthy food markets improves the health of the entire community. Turning a market into a healthy food market provides benefits to all stakeholders involved including local governments, vendors and customers.
Food Safety
Promoting food safety by preventing breakouts of food-borne diseases and zoonoses -- diseases transmissible from animals to humans -- is a major component to a successful healthy food market. Food borne disease has many causes including parasites, pesticides and viruses that result in adverse health effects including birth defects, cancer and neurological syndromes. Recent outbreaks of disease include cholera and avian influenza. Disease presents both food safety and occupational health hazards that can be addressed by improving market conditions.
Improvements
Upgrading the environment of the market by constructing buildings and roads as well as improving water drainage are common approaches for creating a Healthy Food Market. Improvements to infrastructure such as properly placed toilets with hand-washing stations along with an efficient waste removal system and sufficient water for drinking, food preparation and cleaning represent other improvements regarded as effective by the WHO. A healthy food market slaughters and sells livestock as far away from raw and ready-to-eat foods as possible to avoid contamination. Vendors receive training on general hygiene and food safety principals pertaining to their specific products.
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