Good Bowls: Empowering Communities to Achieve Good Food Access and Health Equity

Project Title

Funding Dates

2016 – present

Description

Good Bowls are locally-sourced, delicious, and nutritious frozen meals based on recipes developed to promote an evidence-based healthful dietary pattern (Mediterranean-style diet). The project uses a cost-offset or sliding scale model, in which Good Bowls are sold at a higher price in high-end stores and at a lower price in corner stores and at worksites. Several grants have provided funding to develop and pilot test the idea. A Small Business Technology Transfer grant from NIH (the National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities) is providing funding to more rigorously test the impact. Using a franchise-like arrangement, Good Bowls, LLC in collaboration with a larger Value Added Processing Facility (VAPF) will provide the food production and distribution expertise, recipes, packaging, labeling, food safety, marketing, and general technical assistance to two smaller/rural VAPFs that will produce Good Bowls and sell them to both higher and lower-cost food retailers. Specific aims include examination of the (1) viability of Good Bowls production in one larger/central facility near Chapel Hill, N.C. and two satellite/franchises in rural, low-income N.C. communities (e.g., customer satisfaction, production capability and cost, sales, and retail price points); (2) early-stage impact on food insecurity and nutrition (e.g., replacement of less healthy options and impact of supplemental web-based nutrition information/education); and (3) contributions to economic development in rural communities for farmers and small businesses (e.g., revenue and jobs creation).

Research Areas

Health Equity
Healthy Food Access
Nutrition and Physical Activity

Principal Investigator

Alice Ammerman, DrPH*

Funding

Felix Harvey Foundation; Carolina Kickstart; NIH Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) grant

*Conflict of Interest Disclosure: Dr. Alice Ammerman, director of the UNC Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, founded and has equity ownership in Equiti Foods, LLC (formerly Good Bowls, LLC). This relationship has been disclosed to and is under management by UNC-Chapel Hill.