Food Deserts – Not just for big cities anymore

Posted by jfoster | Comments Off

As I was leaving Nashville yesterday, NPR ran a great story on “food deserts” in Nashville. A food desert is an area in which there is little or no access to foods required for a healthy diet. Usually there isn’t a full service grocery store within a mile. These areas are typically in poor areas of town and tend to have the unhealthiest residents in a city. The story talked about how residents in these areas that don’t have transportation are forced to settle for the neighborhood store. While well stocked with processed foods and plenty of junk food, these stores are short on fresh fruits and vegetables. Because they have to rely on cabs or public transportation, getting to a “real” grocery store can be inconvenient and sometimes expensive.

Mark Bittman, author of How to Cook Everything recently wrote a blog post for the NY times on how eating fresh foods can be as cheap as eating processed junk. Boy did his readers let him have it. The majority of his readers thought he (and the Times) were out of touch with the realities of the lives of many New Yorkers. They cited the main issue that the Food Deserts story sited: lack of easy access to healthy foods for lower income New Yorkers.  When I read that article last week, while I thought it was interesting, I in no way correlated it to a city the size of Nashville. This NPR story opened my eyes.

 The economic reality is that major grocery store chains aren’t in a hurry to locate in low income neighbor hoods where many of their potential customers are on public assistance.  The smaller stores  come in and stock the shelves with the essentials that they know they can sell but fruits and veggies often aren’t on that list. If they do have them, many times they’re cost prohibitive. Imagine if you had several kids to feed on a very strict budget and you had to make a choice between getting your kids  cheap processed junk food or perishable (and expensive) fruits and veggies. Or if you had to choose between shopping at the corner store that’s in walking distance or getting on the bus to get to Kroger  or Publix. Which do you think most would choose? The worst part about this is that kids that grow up eating junk food turn into adults that eat junk food, hence the high rates of obesity and obesity related diseases in many of our communities.  Three cheers for the people that are trying to make a difference in these neighborhoods.  The only way change will happen is if the people in these communities demand better.