The Takeaway: Story of the Day - Wendell Pierce of 'The Wire' and 'Treme' Hopes Groceries Can Revitalize New Orleans

Wendell Pierce of 'The Wire' and 'Treme' Hopes Groceries Can Revitalize New Orleans

03/04/13 • -1 min

Wendell Pierce is best-known for his role as Bunk in the HBO series "The Wire," and he currently plays a struggling trombonist in the series "Treme." But he's taking on a much different job these days in his hometown of New Orleans, where he is in the process of opening a chain of grocery stores meant to revitalize the city he loves.

Inspired by first lady Michelle Obama's healthful food financing initiative in 2011, Pierce and his partners created Sterling Farms, a grocery chain dedicated to eradicating food deserts in New Orleans.

The chain was created to meet a demand that other retailers weren't willing to gamble on supplying. According to Pierce, there are many neighborhoods in New Orleans that lack access to basic grocery store staples such as fresh produce and food staples. "There are so many communities that are undeserved...where people have to make a huge effort to just get to a grocery store. And I saw that happening all over New Orleans after Katrina. And here we are seven and a half years later...and there are still areas like the lower 9th Ward and New Orleans East that still don't have access to a decent grocery store."

Pierce believes that these grocery stores will help the restore the communities in which they're located. "It is the heart and soul of a community when you have access to fresh foods. It is the sustenance of life and the heartbeat of the community," he says."It's no longer acceptable to stand on the sidelines. If not now, when? If not me, who?" asks Pierce.

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Diet Advice Abounds, But Are We Getting Healthier?

Even if you're relatively secure about your health and waistline, it'd be impossible to completely miss the buzz around the major diet trends of recent years. We want to know what to eat and when to eat it, and we sometimes take it to extremes. In Japan, a fad called the "Morning Banana Diet" even set off a banana shortage — spiking banana prices by 20 percent in 2008.

But as we careen from one diet to the next, we’ve been making substantive changes in our eating habits, too. Over the past 30 years, Americans’ per capita consumption of red meat fell by more than 20 lb. per year. We drink less than a third of the amount of whole milk we did in 1980 and almost twice the amount of skim milk. We eat less margarine, less lard, less shortening, and less sugar.

And we keep getting new advice. This week The New York Times reported on another new kind of diet: The Mediterranean Diet. It's designed to be rich in in olive oil, nuts, beans, fish, fruits and vegetables, and even red wine, and the diet is said to extend the lifespan of its adherents.But is all this nutrition advice actually making us healthier? Michael Moss, author of "Salt Sugar Fat" is an investigative journalist whose new book focuses on the corporate side of what we eat.

According to Moss, one reason we seem to be losing the health battle amidst so much advice and information on the issue is economic disadvantage. Moss quotes Bob Drain, the inventor of Lunchables, in his book as saying "The people who make the processed food don’t eat the processed food. And therein lies the class issue that really goes with the food industry in America."

Moss says of the executives in the processed food industry: "They know better, because salt, sugar and fat are the three pillars, the holy grail, of the processed food industry. The scientists are driving as hard as they can to reach those perfect amounts that will send us over the moon."

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Iran, Russia, and United States Join Forces

Now here's something the United States, Russia, and Iran can all agree on: Wrestling should stay in the Olympics. After the International Olympic Committee announced last month that the sport will likely be dropped after 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad both pledged to fight to keep wrestling in the Olympics. That cause is one Americans are sympathetic to as well — even on Wall Street. Mike Novogratz, president of Fortress Investment Group, wrestled for Princeton as an undergraduate. Now he's leading the campaign to save the sport's place in the Olympics.