‘I want to eat better — but how can I?’

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| AP

Updated: July 29, 2011 2:16AM

After rolling out of bed in the morning, eating something nutritional is never my first choice. I just want something to hold me over until lunch at school — healthful or not. When you’re 16, maintaining a healthful diet is not something you naturally do, especially when you live in South Chicago.

Of course I want to eat better, but how can I when I live four blocks from a huge strip mall jammed with greasy temptations? Along the Dan Ryan, where I live, there are fast-food restaurants as far as the eye can see. But out of at least 10 different grease heavens, there is only one place to really eat “healthy”: Subway.

I also have to battle my culture. I come from an African-American background, and our lifestyle seems to be hindering my health. Maybe we shouldn’t let our culture define our eating habits, but we do. A typical meal consists of fried chicken, collard greens, cornbread, candied yams, macaroni and cheese, etc.

As far as exercising goes, it’s a rare activity in my house, because it’s not a part of our mindset. Even if I did decide to work out at a local Bally’s gym, I would have to be 18 to join, and I’d feel extremely unsafe walking back and forth because of the violence in my neighborhood.

So I’m stuck with unhealthy foods and no place to work out.

The nearest grocery store is five long blocks away. This means that most of the time I just walk to the gas station, corner store or KFC by my house to get a quick bite to eat.

And the lunches my school serves don’t make the problem better. School lunches look very unappetizing on most days, the serving sizes are often very large, and they taste terrible. I usually just wait until I get home to eat whatever I can find.

Although I am a teenager, I am aware of what I’m supposed to eat and how much — the recommended daily servings of meat, grains, fruits and vegetables — and I know I am not.

As an alternative to all these unhealthy realities, I believe that South Chicago should create a community garden, sustained by the efforts of the residents themselves. A garden that offered the community fresh and delicious options could help decrease obesity levels.

Nutrition classes and exercise programs could help, as well, to turn around obesity on the South Side.

But that wouldn’t be part of African-American or South Chicago culture, where obesity and obesity-related deaths are becoming the norm.

Keisha Liddell is a junior at EPIC Academy Charter High School, a public school in South Chicago. She is one of several high school students working with undergraduates and medical students at the University of Chicago this summer on health-related service projects. Liddell’s South Chicago team chose to focus on obesity. They are working on starting a community garden, nutrition classes for youths and advocating for healthier meals in schools.