“How is your nutrition?” she asked one woman in Spanish as they stood together at a front doorway missing its door.
“We eat what we can get,” the woman said.
“Do you ever eat vegetables?”
“Not much. Maybe beans, some salsa.”
“Do you exercise?”
“No.”
“Do you have a fridge?”
“Not anymore.”
The woman explained that she stored what little food she had in an icebox, and that the closest grocery store offering fresh produce was seven miles away. Nobody in Little Mexico exercised outside after 4 p.m., she said, for fear of the dogs and drug cartels that roamed the streets.
Rueda started to move on to the next house, but the woman called after her with a question of her own — one not covered in the six nutrition lessons, and the one Rueda heard most often in Little Mexico and the hundreds of places like it.
“Do you have any extra food?” the woman asked. “Anything?”
“Yes,” Rueda said. “We can bring you some.”