Lack of grocery stores in North End contributing to diabetes: UN official

Winnipeg Harvest teamed up with Food Matters Manitoba and the North End Food Security Network (NEFSN) to have Olivier De Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, speak Friday.

Jasmine Tara, the co-ordinator for NEFSN, says that one of the main reasons for the visit to the the Winnipeg Harvest building was to bring prominence to the fact that people in the North End of Winnipeg aren’t eating healthy because they are often shopping for their groceries at convenience stores.

“In the North End, there are 62 convenience stores with inflated prices and no large grocery stores,” said Tara. “These stores either inflate the cost of healthy foods or don’t even offer them at all. It forces people to buy cheap processed foods.