Welcome to the Food & Fitness Initiative

The places where we live, learn, work and play affect our health.

The quality of our food and fitness environments-whether we have access to affordable, healthy, locally grown food and places to be active and play-impacts our health and quality of life. To be healthy, people need places that support healthy choices.

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation Food & Fitness initiative is working to create vibrant communities by transforming the systems that impact two of our most basic human needs-food and physical activity. These two elements are fundamental for communities to thrive.

That is why the Kellogg Foundation is investing in nine communities across the country as they plan their visions for the future. Grounding Food & Fitness is an understanding that many underlying, interconnected and often invisible systems impact our health and quality of life. To improve the health and wellbeing of children and families, communities are transforming the systems that impact how food arrives on the table and how places are built through policy change and locally driven strategies.

This work is urgent. Today, we have an unprecedented opportunity to address the crisis of escalating chronic illnesses, many of which are preventable and linked to poor diet and physical inactivity. Diabetes, obesity and heart disease are compromising millions of lives, straining the economy and healthcare system, and fueling health disparities by disproportionately afflicting low-income communities and communities of color.

Increasing access to good food and fitness opportunities will bring manifold benefits. Through Food & Fitness we can reinvigorate local economies, reduce healthcare costs and address legacies of inequity. The time is now to build healthier communities for all.