Residents of Prospect-Lefferts Gardens have a variety of fast-food options. Photo: Melissa Smith.

Karen Oh, who lives in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, has decided to do something about the lack of healthy food options in her neighborhood.

“I think that any community, regardless of socioeconomic status or race, should have access to affordable high quality food,” Oh said.

On a three-block stretch of Empire Boulevard, there are five fast-food restaurants.  The main grocery option, Western Beef, does not carry enough fresh and organic foods, according to several residents. Oh, 38, who has lived in the neighborhood for four years, has trudged to the subway to get her groceries from neighboring Park Slope.

Oh rounded up some neighbors and started organizing the Lefferts Community Food Co-op.  And she is one of many co-op organizers throughout the city area. Co-ops are sprouting in Jersey City, N.J., and the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Clinton Hill and Bedford Stuyvesant, to name a few.

Stuart A. Reid, 53, executive director of the Food Co-op Initiative, which advises co-op organizers on how to open successfully, says that within the last five years or so there has been a spike in interest to start co-ops in lower-income urban areas.

Socioeconomic disparities in health have, historically, put many of the city’s lower income communities, with oversaturated fast-food markets and inadequate grocery options, in the spotlight as symbols of unhealthiness and obesity, according to a 2009 report by the United States Department of Agriculture.  In Reid’s opinion, the recent national interest in nutrition is driving residents of underserved communities to want access to healthy food. But starting a co-op in a neighborhood with vast socio-economic and ethnic differences poses its fair share of obstacles.

Market research indicates that the best area for a co-op is an upper middle class educated white community,” said Reid.

The main challenge in opening a food co-op in an urban neighborhood is getting people who are undereducated about healthy eating to understand how the co-op will be a benefit to them since cost is typically not one.

“The price of Wonder Bread at a food co-op and at your local bodega will be the same. The price of organic wheat bread will be higher because it’s better quality,” Reid says.  Co-ops can make organic food more affordable but they can’t make it cost the same as its lower quality counterparts.

Oh wants to use the Park Slope Food Co-op as a guide —a member-only labor model where shoppers have a monthly work requirement to keep their membership. This way, staffing costs are not getting passed onto the consumer; ensuring the lowest possible price for high-quality food.

Oh’s co-op model is far from what was the norm in the food co-op boom of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. The Park Slope Food Co-op began small in 1973 and in 37 years blossomed into the more than 12,000-member organization it is today. Oh envisions the genesis of her food co-op differently.

“I want this to look like an actual grocery store for the community from the beginning,” Oh said.

A critical part of successfully opening a co-op that serves a large community is getting enough people involved and signed on at the outset.  Oh and her team are focusing the lion share of their efforts on food education and outreach. They are pamphleteering the neighborhood and holding food education workshops in an effort to tap into the community. Nadia R. Williams, 32, a core member of the co-op’s outreach group, says, anecdotally, that the large West Indian community will help advance the co-op’s mission.

“Knowing West Indians – we want access to fresh fruits and vegetables like where we came from,” Williams said.

A study in the June 2007 Obesity Journal notes that foreign born blacks were 40% less likely to be obese than U.S.-born blacks. Yet, acculturation that follows in next generations has many immigrants adopting American eating habits.

Oh wants to open the Lefferts Community Food Co-op in fall 2012.

“It takes three to four years to change shopping habits,” Oh said.

Through her team’s extensive community outreach and education, Oh hopes, within the next two, to persuade people to make the switch.