Tower Renewal Blog

Fresh Food on Wheels – Bringing Fresh Food Trucks to Apartment Neighbourhoods

Photographs by Toronto Public Health

One of the key challenges facing the region’s Apartment Neighourhoods is providing convenient access to healthy fresh food to the thousands of residents that call these neighbourhoods home. Over the past few years, ERA, CUG+R, and project partners United Way Toronto and Toronto Public Health have advocated for, and are in the process of implementing new zoning by-laws to allow the sale of food, goods and services in these neighbourhoods, which is today often prohibited.

Yet while new zoning paves the way for exciting initiates, what is needed is action on the ground. Enter an exciting new service developed by Toronto Public Health, FoodShare Toronto and United Way Toronto that brings healthy food to underserved communities in Toronto. The Mobile Food Bus is a TTC bus remodeled to transport, display, and vend a variety of Ontario and imported fresh fruits and vegetables across the city. The service is currently set to stops at eight Toronto sites, with a particular focus on apartment neighbourhoods and other areas that experience limited access to fresh food, due to both economic and infrastructural barriers.

Apartment Neighbourhoods and Incidence of Diabetes in Toronto

The service not only brings healthy food to communities in need, it also provides a excellent point of convergence around which the community can meet and engage each other as neighbours.

To learn more about this joint initiative of Ontario Centres of Excellence, Toronto Public Health, Toronto Food Strategy, FoodShare Toronto, United Way Toronto, and the Food Policy Research Inititative, please visit FoodShare.net.

To learn more about a CUG+R’s,Toronto Public Health’s and United Way Toronto’s collective work on establishing new policies for healthy and vibrant Apartment Neighbourhoods, please see the reports “Toward Healthier Apartment Neighbourhoods” and “A New Approach to Zoning for Apartment Neighbourhoods”.

Congratulations to all involved; we look forward to seeing this exciting program evolve.