Tom Menino, 1942-2014

In a tribute to former Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, Atlantic food writer Corby Kummer said he deserved the title “mayor of food.”

Menino, who served five terms and 20 years in office, died Thursday following a battle with cancer at age 71.

“Menino cared about food for exactly the reasons today’s food-movement activists do, and long before it was fashionable to embrace what food can and should mean: access to fresh produce for everyone of every income level; gardens as ways to unite and repair communities; and, most importantly, fresh food as a route to better health,” Kummer wrote.

Menino wanted to be remembered as “the public-health mayor” and Marion Nestle of New York University said in her blog today that she was amazed to hear him say that the biggest battle of his five terms as mayor was getting sodas out of the public schools.

Menino also helped former Massachusetts Agriculture Commissioner and Agriculture Undersecretary for Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services Gus Schumacher launch the first farmers’ market nutrition program that allowed participants in the special nutrition program for women, infants and children (WIC) to use their benefits to buy fruits and vegetables at the markets.

He was also an early pioneer of the double bucks programs and prescription fruit and vegetable programs that allow low-income people cheaper access to those products at farmers markets.

Menino was generally a supporter of locally owned business, but Kummer noted in an interview with Whole Foods CEO Walter Robb last week at the Washington Ideas Forum that the mayor had supported the arrival of a Whole Foods market in the Jamaica Plain section of Boston.

▪ The Atlantic — The Mayor of Food
▪ Washington Ideas Forum (Video) — Interview with Walter Robb, CEO of Whole Foods