PATHMARK SUPERMARKET

摘要

Though in recent years parts of Harlem have experienced a well-publicized renaissance, much of the upper Manhattan neighborhood remains intensely poor. In East Harlem, the area north of 96th street and east of Fifth Avenue, the median household income in 2000 was $21,500 a year, barely over half the city's overall median income. Thirty-seven percent of the population lived below the poverty line. For all its hard-won progress, the neighborhood at the end of the 20th century was both a concentrated center of New York City poverty and a vexingly difficult place to buy food for a healthy diet. One documented example suggests the wider dimen- sions of East Harlem's food problem: A 2004 study looked for a basic list of foods recommended for people with diabetes—a disease especially prevalent among Latinos and African Americans, and thus a serious public health problem in Harlem. Researchers found far fewer sources of these foods in East Harlem than in the more affluent Upper East Side, which lies immediately to the south. Predictably, a critical factor in whether a family could find the recommended foods was whether they lived near a large grocery store. Until 1999, the vast majority of East Harlem residents did not.