Claudia Corchado of the Livingston Medical Group discussed childhood obesity with the Community Resource Council Wednesday.</p><p>"We live in the Central Valley. We produce a lot of healthy foods. We produce a lot of fruits and vegetables yet we still have a hard time providing these healthy foods to our own families," Corchado said. "I don't think I have to specify how severe the obesity rate is in children." </p><p>As part of her job Corchado is involved in the Central California Regional Obesity Prevention Program. CCROPP works with local markets, encouraging them to provide a wider selection of healthy food choices. It also works with local agencies like police departments to help curb crime so children can feel safe while outdoors getting exercise.</p><p>"CCROPP has a regional focus but (it is) community driven. Of course the folks that live in those areas are going to be the ones that know what's going on in their neighborhoods," Corchado said.</p><p>She said Merced County has been working ways to increase access to healthy foods to low-income families.</p><p>Corchado said cultural differences and language barriers have traditionally kept Hispanic and Hmong families away from farmers markets.</p><p>"Some of the reason's why we haven't shopped farmers markets is because we weren't raised with farmers markets," she said. "Maybe there's a language barrier between the consumer and vendor, we aren't aware of what organic means and the health benefits organically grown foods can provide. That's one of the things CCROPP wants to work on."</p><p>Corchado said CCROPP, in areas outside of Los Ba&#241;os, has worked with flea markets to increase available of fresh produce to food stamp recipients.</p><p>Corchado said CCROPP now wants to do a survey to assess the availability of healthy foods in Los Ba&#241;os.</p><p>Kelly Rose of the Merced County Department of Public Health is assisting with the survey. She said local information on the issue still needs to be collected because most of the data are geared toward areas outside of Central California.</p><p>"We're trying to give out some community interventions. There's a lot of fast food out there, we're trying to find out where these places are at," Rose said.</p><p>She said during the surveys people are sent into stores to see how much junk food and what kind are being sold. She said healthy items and their quality are recorded as well.</p><p>"We also see how easy the walk is to get to the store," Rose said. "Anecdotally, we have speeders, loose dogs, people that come up to talk to us. We look at all these different things." </p><p>She said CCROPP wants community members in Los Ba&#241;os to help in the survey.</p><p>"We're stationed out in Merced city. We really don't know the details in Los Ba&#241;os. We need some community members to help us out," she said. </p><p>Corchado said many markets would like to provide healthy food.</p><p>"Some corner markets see health department folks and they're like 'Ooh, they're going to fine us' or whatever," Corchado said. "But what we found out that a lot of the markets do want to provide healthy food, they do want to provide fruits and vegetables, they do want to provide wheat bread, low fat milk but they don't have the capacity. They don't have the refrigeration units, they don't have the boxes that hold the produce."</p><p>Corchado said the state is finally realizing the problem and searching for ways to get money to markets to help them be able to stock more healthy food items.</p><p>To volunteer to do the survey or for more information on childhood obesity contact Kelly Rose at 381-1032.</p><p>Reporter Corey Pride can be reached at (209)388-6563 or by e-mail at cpride@losbanosenterprise.com