I recently came across an amazing lecture by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride called “Overcoming Psychiatric Problems by Healing the Digestive System”, and it stirred something deep in me.

I thought to myself, this can’t stay in my notes. So I’m sharing it through my lens, through the heartbeat of Yonkers, through the eyes of a people who are often dismissed, overmedicated, and underserved.

Because let’s be real: most of us are taught to treat symptoms, not the source. We’re told “just go to therapy” or “just take the meds,” but nobody’s asking what’s really inflaming us, in our bodies, in our environments, and in our spirits.

Feeding the Mind, Starving the System: Healing in Yonkers’ Food Deserts By Larnez Kinsey 5

Yonkers: The Struggle Is Systemic, But So Is the Strength

In Yonkers, where over 25% of residents live below the poverty line, we face compounding barriers to wellness:

Zip codes 10701 and 10703 are federally recognized food deserts, where thousands of residents, many without cars, have little to no access to affordable, fresh food.
Processed food, corner stores, and fast food dominate the local landscape, while supermarkets, wellness hubs, and green markets are rare or hard to reach.
These neighborhoods also have some of the highest rates of preventable hospitalizations in Westchester County, driven by nutrition-related illnesses, unmanaged stress, and environmental toxins.

So while people talk about “mental health awareness,” they’re missing the setup:

You can’t heal a community with no access to clean food.

The Gut–Brain Connection is Real

Dr. Natasha’s lecture drops the science: the gut and brain are constantly talking. When your gut is inflamed, whether from antibiotics, processed foods, toxins, or chronic stress, your brain struggles to regulate emotion, focus, or energy.

Conditions like ADHD, anxiety, depression, and mood disorders aren’t always mental. They’re often metabolic. Inflammation and leaky gut disrupt the brain’s ability to function clearly.

This isn’t a theory. It’s biology.

GAPS Protocol: A Blueprint for Restoring, Not Just Coping

The GAPS (Gut and Psychology Syndrome) protocol is a return to what our grandmothers knew:

Bone broths to heal the gut lining
Fermented foods to rebuild internal balance
Real, whole foods that regulate the nervous system
Cutting out processed sugar, chemicals, and toxic habits

This is not about being perfect. This is about being present, in your own body.

Who’s Allowing the Erosion of Our Health?

Let’s call it what it is: Community boards in Yonkers have been complicit.

While families in 10701 and 10703 are juggling two jobs just to survive, these boards are approving the expansion of liquor stores, check-cashing joints, smoke shops, and fast-food chains. All in walking distance of our schools, parks, and bus stops.

And they do it like it’s business as usual. But for us? It’s life or death.

Every time a new Popeyes slides into a rezoning plan while we still can’t get a full-service grocery store or farmers market in southwest Yonkers, that’s not oversight. That’s violence.

Because these entities don’t invest in us—they extract from us.

They profit off our hunger, our time poverty, and our trauma.

And community boards let it happen in the name of “economic growth.”

So yes, corporations are allowed to patronize our blocks, but we’re the ones paying the price, in heart disease, in chronic stress, in misdiagnosed behavior issues, in preventable deaths.

Our babies don’t need another 2-for-1 combo meal.

They need green space, fresh food, and policy that protects their futures.

If your board seat means rubber-stamping toxic zoning into Black and Brown neighborhoods, you’re not a community leader, you’re a gatekeeper of decay.

Healing begins when extraction ends.

And Yonkers deserves better.

Who’s Really Responsible?

Let’s be clear: it’s not just the community board.

There’s a whole chain of decision-makers who’ve allowed this health crisis to root itself in our soil and they need to be named.

The Real Roster of Responsibility:

Zoning & Planning Departments – They approve what gets built. They’ve prioritized profit over prevention for decades.
City Council & Local Elected Officials – They smile for ribbon cuttings while ignoring budgets for food access and wellness infrastructure.
Developers & Landlords – They give rent deals to fast food chains and push out community-owned co-ops. That’s economic violence.
Local Hospitals & Health Systems – You can’t preach “mental health awareness” and stay silent on food apartheid. If you treat the symptom and ignore the cause, you’re hustling, not healing.
County & State Agencies – They talk public health equity while slashing funding to mobile clinics, food justice orgs, and maternal health programs.
Local Media – If they only report on shootings, but not on the systems that make wellness nearly impossible, they’re shaping public opinion to normalize neglect.

And yes…

Sometimes, it’s us too.

We can’t afford to stay uninformed or uninvolved.

If we’re not at the hearings, the budget meetings, the board votes, decisions get made without us, but always about us.

But hear me clearly: we didn’t build this system. So we shouldn’t bear it alone.

Accountability must start at the top.