Food Desert Research Paper

The criteria for a food desert as stated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture is if a fifth of the citizens are living in poverty and a third live more than a mile from a grocery store in urban areas, or more than ten miles in rural areas. Almost 9,000 neighborhoods were classified as food deserts by the USDA in their most recent review of these areas.

In cities where gentrification is rapidly expanding, food deserts are proving to be a significant downfall to the process of urbanizing these cities. A food desert is a poverty stricken area where there is a lack of healthy food options such as grocery stores and farmer’s markets. Instead, there are a range of fast food restaurants and unhealthy, small stores. With only these options to chose from, this can cause health problems for the lower class citizens that have been living in these neighborhoods before gentrification occurred because they generally do not have the money, or a car, to go out of town to get to a grocery store and buy healthy and more nutritional food. So, these people are forced to eat out on a regular basis because it

Food deserts disproportionately affect poor communities in both rural and urban areas. Rural food deserts are additionally characterized by a lack of access to grocery stores as well as the inability to make healthy food choices due to a lack of general education. Urban food deserts, conversely,

Although food deserts have both major and deadly impacts on people’s lives, the solutions to ending them, and the people needed to execute the solutions are quite simple. Because attracting grocery

Research shows that, like most major public health concerns (Diez Roux et al. 2001; Odoms-Young et al. 2009), economically disadvantaged neighborhoods and those characterized by higher concentrations of minorities are at a disproportionately high risk of living in food deserts (Burns and Inglis 2007).

Though it seems a daunting task, food deserts can be conquered. Morton and Blanchard (2007) believe there are key points in this. For starters, they believe the focus on economic development to mitigate population loss is a central reason for the exodus of local grocers. Therefore, targeting federal food and nutrition programs to areas designated as food deserts in rural America is key. In these efforts, advocating for advantageous wholesale prices and distribution networks is essential. Furthermore, shopping locally and creating campaigns to buy locally can revitalize rural neighborhoods and increase the community tax base. Connecting local food producers to local markets is mutually beneficial; as fresh, high-quality foods are needed to hold

The United States overall health is notably unfixed, especially among different populations and neighborhoods. Those who remain to be the most heavily impacted by health disparities include those who are of low socioeconomic status or are poor. A very well known, yet inadequately addressed environmental health disparity is the unequal access to healthy foods and grocery stores in poverty areas across the U.S. This includes the deprivation of resources in low-income populations. Many low-income communities are surrounded by fast food restaurants, convenience and liquor stores. These communities see very few grocery stores and healthy food vendors in their community. The basic problem is that this unequal access to healthy foods and grocery stores create environmental challenges to make healthy dietary choices and maintain a healthy body weight. This overall problem can be referred to as “food deserts” which was first used

Food deserts continual existence comes from the fact that nobody really has an awareness of its existence. Speaking from my own experience, I did not know anything about food deserts or what a food desert was until I started doing research. The government must fix this difficult situation and steps have been taken already, “in 2010 U.S. Pres. Barrack Obama has proposed the Healthy Food Financing Initiative (HFFI), which encouraged retailers to bring healthy foods to impoverished urban and rural communities” . However, with the government dealing with many other problems, the food desert problem doesn’t seem to be a main priority at the current moment for them. Consequently, this puts us in a position where we have to step up. People need to become more aware of this situation and how it greatly affects the people living in these communities in a very unhealthy way, “food desert resides thus face both geography and selection limitation, which could push consumers toward less healthy fare” .

In a Policy Forum article published in PLOS Medicine, Jason Block and S V Subramanian, from Harvard University, United States, stated that the self-motivation to put an end to food deserts in low-income, geographic communities that do not have access to a large grocery store, may not have an effect on enhancing dietary quality or lessen the great difference in the diet quality.

The intersection of nutrition and access to healthy foods shows great disparities. A great example of this is the existence of food deserts in Los Angeles Although definitions of food desserts vary, in class, we defined food deserts as urban areas where there is an absence of a major grocery store within one mile of people’s homes. Food deserts are usually found in low income neighborhoods. Many Angelinos live in food deserts and resort to eating fast food or putting meals together from ingredients bought at liquor and convenience stores. Most of these ingredients are packaged, processed foods, high in sodium and low in healthy nutrients. On the other hand, resident’s other residents have abundant access to the foods they need through restaurants, farmer’s markets and grocery

The Hunger Games Assignment allowed me to put into perspective how hard it would be to remain healthy in a food desert. I chose the scenario of the 20-year-old vegetarian college student because I thought it would be the easiest to do out of three scenarios, but it was harder than I thought it would be. It was difficult to avoid buying any meat but still get some sort of protein for my scenario. My shopping trip to the full-service store, Harris Teeter, was simpler than going shopping in the convenience store, CVS. My Harris Teeter total was $37.62, leaving $62.38; my CVS total was $50.24, leaving $49.76. Although I was able to buy enough food for two weeks with a budget of $100, there was a $12.62 difference between my shopping trips with the two stores (CVS 2018; Harris Teeter 2018). There was a noticeable difference in what was available to me in each store and at what price it was offered to me.

The United States is a land of freedom, opportunity, and a place where food is plentiful. At least seemingly. As it turns out millions of Americans are going hungry each and everyday. This hunger though, is not the traditional hunger that you may see in an impoverished nation. In The United States there are many areas, “especially in urban situations” called food deserts. Food deserts are places where people have to drive quite a distance to buy fresh foods and vegetables, people who live in food deserts tend to be impoverished, of color, and live in urban areas, despite this many people try to correct the problem of food deserts.

Before starting depth of our paper work, I will first give a little brief introduction about our topic. Because, even though it has been around for more than a decade, but eighty percent of people may still have never heard of it. Cummins and Macintyre report that a resident of public housing in western Scotland supposedly invented the more specific term "food desert" in the early 1990s. The phrase was officially used for the first time in a 1995 document from a policy working group of the Low Income Project Team of the UK's Nutrition Task Force (Cummins). "Food deserts" refers to a living area where there is no life supermarket selling fresh vegetables and meat, even do not have fresh farmer's market. People living in an area that only surrounding by fast-food restaurant which sell junk food or high-sugar and high-calorie.

The major problem in food deserts is the access to a healthier and nutritious foods. To simply resolve this, we just need to enable the access for the people. One way to accomplish this is by encourage retailers to open a shop at this food deserts area. By enabling more access to a supermarket or retail stores, we can greatly reduce this problem. It is even mentioned in The Columbus Dispatch newspaper where in one of the interview with the locals, they mentioned that the establishment of a supermarket within a walking distance is an option that the residence see as a new option rather than driving miles away just to get the groceries done.

As one of the world’s most economically developed countries, the reality that we are in the midst of a public health crisis is quite ironic. However, public health is not a laughing matter. There are many variables that impact an individual’s quality of life, however we will focus on one; “YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT!” It’s that succinct phrase that theorists have leveraged to link the absence of nutritious food to negatively impacting public health. A geographic area where nutritious food is difficult to obtain is deemed a food desert. Sadly food deserts are usually present in marginalized, minority, and