Community Nutritional Support
The consumers with developmental challenges of DHDA come to the aid of the local community in the form of offering nutritional foods to people who find themselves in Food Deserts or unable to financially access healthy nutritional foods. Food Deserts are geographic areas where residents’ access to affordable, healthy food options (especially fresh fruits and vegetables) is restricted or nonexistent due to the absence of grocery stores within convenient traveling distances. 2.3 million people (or 2.2 percent of all US households) live more than one mile away from a supermarket and do not own a car. These food deserts are most commonly found in communities of color and low-income areas (where many people don’t have cars).
People’s choices about what to eat are severely limited by the options available to them and what they can afford—and many food deserts contain an overabundance of fast food chains selling cheap “meat” and dairy-based foods that are high in fat, sugar and salt.
The consumers with ASD challenges provide a percentage of the product of the farms they work on for economically challenged families, and families identified as being at nutritional risk in the communities immediately surrounding the farm. So, the people with autism are directly addressing, and helping, the issue of malnutrition and obesity, with its associated public health problems, in the community they live in.
People with Autism to the rescue!