“What if we went to these neighborhoods and didn't assume that poor people or communities of color do not want to eat healthy?”You can lead a horse to water. You cannot make it drink.
I don't know how to fix this. I grew up in a home where food was very important. There was a garden out back and my mother cooked from scratch, etc. In recent years, I've been quite poor, including spending some of that time homeless.
My firsthand observation of other poor people is that most of them seem to cut the food budget first. Anecdotally, when I finally got off the street by moving into a cheap rental, many other residents clearly smoked cigarettes and/or marijuana. They tended to stay up all night. I wasn't disturbed by their behavior because I couldn't hear them in my room, but I could hear them anytime I went down the hall to the bathroom.
The character of the residents has changed in the time I have been here. I think the presence of my family is a factor in that. People behave better. Most people seem to sleep at night. We smell less cigarette smoke and less marijuana smoke.
We smell more food cooking in the building. I think people are smoking less because they are eating better and they probably somehow learned that from us (at least to some degree).
Do note that one reason a lot of homeless people smoke is because it is an appetite suppressant. I think people were smoking so much because they weren't eating enough. Now, people are eating better and smoking less and their sleep schedules, behavior, etc all appear to be improved in the aggregate.
I know from talking with people and reading articles, etc, that a lot of poor Americans have this idea that eating well is some luxury they cannot afford rather than a basic necessity upon which everything else is based. They try to get cheap, convenient food. They often lack good cooking skills.
To my mind, poverty and health problems grow out of this broken mental model. I don't know how we fix it, but I don't think just making sure there are stores selling fresh produce fixes it. When I was homeless, bananas and oranges were frequently given for free to homeless people and I sometimes saw other homeless folks just leave it on a sidewalk somewhere.
I really think we need to figure out how to promote healthier eating in the US. I don't think that actually starts with stores per se. I don't know where it starts. But we have this bizarre idea that "health care" happens at a doctor's office instead of seeing diet and lifestyle as the foundations of health that they actually are. Americans tend to have lousy diets and then high medical bills.