“Growing up in Yonkers, New York, we didn’t know what was good for us. If you walk down a block in the ‘hood, it was nearly impossible to find something healthy to put in your body.” Those are the words from mult–platinum rapper Jadakiss. Originally from the legendary hip hop group, The Lox, Jadakiss reflects on the poverty-stricken food desert where he once lived.
“We were consuming whatever was available to us.”
“In the poor communities, it’s mostly the money gets invested in liquor stores and kinda things we really don’t need,” award-winning rapper and former member of The Lox Styles P says.
“All we knew was running to the fast-food spots and convenient stores to get slices of pizza, chips, big bags of candy, doughnuts, etc. It was garbage,” Jadakiss confesses.
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So Jadakiss teamed up with Styles P and did something uncommon for hardcore rappers: opening natural juice bars in their old neighborhood, simply called Juices For Life.
We all know that the high rates of obesity and disease in urban communities are not a result of people not wanting to be healthy, but a problem of access. Instead of maintaining a healthy lifestyle, many of us in urban communities end up in the emergency room as a last resort when they get sick. It’s the highest cost of health care.
But preventative care is the lowest cost. That’s what Jadakiss and Styles P aim to do.
“Our juice bars are open in the hoods on purpose to educate our people on health awareness,” Jadakiss says in a video on the next page.