Empanada Matters

Today, April 8th, is Empanada Day.
An empanada is a type of turnover shaped like a crescent moon. It is a fried or baked pastry with a filling wrapped with delicate, flaky bread. The food was originally from Spain, as the word “empanar” means to coat with bread. Over time, Spanish colonists carried their “specialized meat pie” traveling to Latin America and the Philippines. As this pastry is convenient to consume, it soon became part of the local’s culture.

Empanada is a nutrition-rich food; one 89g of typical meat-based empanada contains 10g of protein and 2g of dietary fiber. 6–7 pieces of empanada can give us enough daily calories. Moreover, empanada has versatile fillings, from breakfast meat and cheese to dessert-flavor apples or bananas. Regardless of fillings, they are people’s favorites because they are usually cheap, quick, and suitable for on-the-go meals.

Street food vending is very popular in dense urban neighborhoods. You can see many empanadas stand popping out in the downtown area. Those food trucks function like mobile restaurants and travel and park based on the neighborhoods’ lunch demand. The vendors are licensed and considered mobile units with a non-fixed location.

When thinking about the readily-available food from those food trucks, it reminded us of a WELL feature:

“Mobile food markets, food carts, and fruit and vegetable stands are additional ways to increase access to fruit and vegetables in the environment where individuals live, work and learn.” — WELL, N13 Local Food Environment.

While this feature does not mention the word “food truck,” and the studies collected by WELL only focused on diets regarding fruits, vegetables, total fat, and saturated fat; we can still use this WELL fundamental to increase the overall accessibility and visibility of fruit and vegetables on wherever allows street food vending. In that case, we could expand the healthy food retail outlet and lower BMI on an areal scale.

On this momentous day, we frame this card next to a city map. May the WELL features be our guide when we help plan the projects next time.

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By the way, if you are interested in this topic, you might also want to check out “Start-Up City” written by Gabe Klein and David Vega-Barachowitz, published by Island Press.