Guillermina Villa is famous for the seafood she prepares at El Pescadito Tacos y Mariscos, a lunch truck that has been serving customers for more than 25 years near the intersection of Compton Avenue and 62nd Street in South L.A.'s Florence-Firestone neighborhood.
Customers who grew up in the largely industrial area travel great distances — from as far as North Hollywood, Rancho Cucamonga and Oxnard — to treat themselves to favorites like shrimp tacos and empanadas.
But these days a new sign on Villa's truck advertises a smattering of new menu items such as quesadillas made with whole wheat tortillas and ceviche served with a side of plain yogurt and fruit.
The offerings represent a new direction for the business: They're designed to provide healthy balanced meals of less than 700 calories apiece, loaded up with whole grains, fruits and vegetables and carefully calibrated portions of meat and dairy.
"We're concerned about what people are eating," said Alfredo Magallanes, Villa's husband and co-owner of the truck. "That's why we're doing this."
The family's effort is part of a collaboration with Dr. Deborah Cohen, a researcher at the Rand Corp. in Santa Monica who studies causes of obesity. With funding from the National Institutes of Health, she has launched a pilot program to see what might happen if taco trucks start offering healthier meals to their customers.
Lonchera operators volunteer to participate in the effort, which offers them help creating and marketing their healthy offerings and pays them $250 once they complete the requirements for study participation.
Cohen, a family medicine doctor by training, began working with loncheras — the traditional taco trucks that have been a staple in Los Angeles for decades — because they serve a high-risk population, she said.
Cohen estimates that several thousand loncheras operate in Los Angeles County. Many of their customers are Latinos and lower-income people, groups that suffer disproportionately from obesity and obesity-related illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease. According to the 2011 Los Angeles County Health Survey, 31% of Latinos and 30% of people with incomes below the federal poverty level are obese.
Cohen thinks getting trucks to sell healthier fare could help reduce those numbers — if customers buy the better meals.
"If we're able to get the trucks to successfully promote healthier meals, we could have a substantial, measurable health impact," she said.
On the evening of Nov. 19, registered dietitian Monica Montes, who is part of Cohen's team, visited El Palador Oaxaqueno, a night-hours truck that has operated for 10 years, seven of them on Barry Avenue near Santa Monica Boulevard in West Los Angeles.
Montes was there to help owners Doroteo and Victoria Lopez devise their new, balanced dishes. Handing the couple a set of measuring cups and a brand new food scale, she asked them to prepare some candidate dishes — showing them how to measure the ingredients as they went along. Montes would later take the plates with her to analyze their nutritional content and finalize working recipes.
As Doroteo Lopez painstakingly prepared reimagined versions of beef with nopales and chicken, beef and pork tacos, weighing avocado slices and measuring out citrus wedges, a long line of patrons snaked from the truck's service window. It was a chilly night, and most ordered comfort food — tacos or quesadillas served with piles of rice and beans, or traditional Oaxacan clayudas stacked with bean spread, pork and cabbage.
Cohen hopes to have 20 trucks signed on by the end of the year. Once all have completed their work with Montes and started selling their revamped meals, it will be up to customers to make the decision to give tidbits like yogurt, whole wheat tortillas and fresh fruit garnishes a try.
The program gives truck operators the option of handing out coupons to customers who buy the new meals but urges participants to avoid emphasizing the nutritional content of the plates.
Adelita's Catering, a high-volume truck that operates daytime hours near East 12th and South San Pedro streets in the Fashion district downtown, has had good success with its four new offerings: a grilled fish salad, a grilled chicken salad, and plates called El Pescado Incomparable and El Pollo Majestuoso (which offer whole grain rice, fruit and vegetables with fish and chicken, respectively).
Owner Mario Lopez, who operates the truck with his wife, Adela, says he sells 40 or 50 of the new plates every day.
At El Pescadito Tacos y Mariscos, sales of the healthy meals have been slower-going, Alfredo Magallanes said, with customers buying only about three or four a day.
"People are still getting to know the plates," he said. "They come in for the traditional options."
Magallanes said one reason he wanted to participate in Cohen's program was to dispel the popular notion that catering trucks only sell junk.
"We're homemade food," he said. "Everything we sell is fresh."
Over six months, Rand researchers will track the success of the effort, logging healthy meal sales and conducting customer surveys with nonprofit community health organization AltaMed.
If they find that people are buying the healthier plates, they'll expand the project to study how the offerings have improved customers' diets, Cohen said.
eryn.brown@latimes.com
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