UConn Study: How Healthy Are Montville’s Food Options?

Written and reported by Patch Associate Regional Editor Eileen McNamara. 

Montville ranks 127th out of Connecticut’s 169 towns in terms of its “food security,” as defined by a new University of Connecticut study.  

The report, “2012 Community Food Security in Connecticut: An Evaluation and Ranking of 169 Towns,” ranks each town according to how easily its residents can access healthy, affordable foods.  

For instance, towns with easy access to farmer’s markets and other sources of healthy foods would rank higher in food security than communities where residents must travel far from home to find healthy food sources.  

According to the data compiled by the UConn researchers, Weston is the most food secure town in Connecticut and Hartford is the least food security. Montville’s ranking of 127 out of 169 indicates a “relatively greater likelihood of food insecurity
for residents of this town.”

And, Montville also ranks high in the Food Retail ranking (103 out of 169), “thus providing a lower level of food security related to opportunities to purchase food at
 retail.”

But, Montville ranks relatively low in the Food Assistance ranking 38 out of 169, which means there’s greater access to food assistance programs. “Taken together, residents in Montville are more likely to be food insecure but are successfully accessing a relatively greater amount of food assistance resources, however, there is a relative concern about the level of food retail opportunities available for this population.”    

The study also took into account the diversity and proximity of all retail food options for residents and the accessibility of food assistance programs in each town.  

“Most residents in Connecticut have consistent, dependable access to enough food for active, healthy living,” the study states. “Yet each year there are households that experience limited access to food due to a lack of money or other resources."   

Between 2008 and 2010, 12.7 percent of residents in Connecticut were living in food insecure households (38 percent of which were living in ‘households with very low food insecurity.’)  

Approximately one in seven Connecticut households reported there had been times in the past year when they did not have enough money to buy food that they needed.”    

Other factors the study took into account when determining a community’s “food security” included:
•  Poverty and unemployment rates in each town
•  Whether households in each town had access to a vehicle
•  The education level of a town’s residents