Food Deserts Essay

Food deserts are places where healthy foods are not produced nor sold. Unfortunately, Chicago is filled with food deserts. Approximately 600,000 people reside in areas that consist of food deserts (Gallagher, 2006). Nearly 200,000 of those people are children. These children do not have the opportunity for healthier options, which shows an increase in obesity rates (News One Staff, 2011). There are 77 Chicago communities and out of that 77, 23 are food deserts (Gallagher, 2006). Chicagoans-particularly the black communities- are forced to live off the accessible food that is near them. The food deserts are in Austin, North Lawndale, Armour Square, Near South Side, Fuller Park, Grand Boulevard, Washington Park, Woodlawn, West Lawn, Chicago Lawn, Englewood, Ashburn,

If there are any grocery stores are available in lower income areas, most of the people can’t afford the healthier, more expensive foods in the grocery store. They settle for cheaper, but filling, foods. Food deserts are also known for having more fast food restaurants available for the community. Fast food restaurants are built in bulk in lower income areas because more lower income families use them. “Low-income youth and adults are exposed to disproportionately more marketing and advertising for obesity-promoting products” (Food Research and Action Center). Since the fast food restaurant is quicker and easier to get to, and cheaper, it seems to be the better for many families.

In Eric Holt-Gimenez’s article, “The Fight over Food Deserts: Corporate America Smacks Its Way Down”, the author provides answers the food desert epidemic facing the United States today. A food desert is an area in which fresh and nutritious food is not readily available to the masses. Whether it be because of economic or geographic reasons, the fresh ingredients are often scarce and expensive. Gimenez first addresses the corporate aspect of food desert problem and how the big box companies are looking to take advantage of impoverished neighborhoods (Holt-Gimenez 525). Next, Gimenez states a solution to the problem; improving wages for the working class, not providing big business with more money to move into local areas(Holt-Gimenez 526-527). While I agree with Gimenez that having the government fund the big chain stores is not the solution; I do not think that raising the minimum wage is the answer. To solve the food desert problem, the farmers and local grocers need to be funded by the government.

Families in cities rely on general stores and health food stores to obtain food products. A severe shortage of food throughout the country would raise potentially difficult questions for families. Where are they going to get food now that stores

Food deserts are one of the biggest problems in society, as the authors of Food Justice bring up (Gottlieb & Joshi, 2010). In fact, Indianapolis is ranked worst in the nation for food deserts. So what is a food desert? A food desert is when places are left with the lack of availability of nutritious foods and high rates of poverty. Often times, these are known as grocery gaps because grocery stores move out of the area, normally located in low-income communities. It makes sense that they would move to make more profit, but it leaves those in the community left with essentially nothing. Also, most people living in a low-income community do not have access to transportation, so they cannot get to grocery stores that are outside of walking distance. This is why Gleaners, a local food justice organization, steps in and fills in places where grocery stores have left. The program that works to fix this is Mobile Pantries. As I will explore later, Mobile Pantries allows people who cannot reach grocery stores the ability to get nutritious foods they need. Mobile Pantries give people a sense of going to the grocery store and picking out healthy foods. While consumer choice is limited, as Patel mentions, Mobile Pantries still gives people healthy options (Patel, 2014). Gleaners is a part of the Food Justice Movement because while they are not changing consumer choice, they are providing individuals with the option of healthy foods and working to end hunger and obesity

“Food deserts,” areas characterized by relatively poor access to healthy and affordable food, may contribute to social disparities in diet and diet-related health outcomes, such as cardiovascular disease and obesity (Beaulac, Kristjansson, Cummins, 2009). The term “food desert” reportedly originated in Scotland in the early 1990s and was used to describe poor access to an affordable and healthy diet (Beaulac, Kristjansson, Cummins, 2009). Although the term “food desert” can mean a literal absence of retail food in a defined area, studies of food deserts more commonly assess differential accessibility to healthy and affordable food between socioeconomically advantaged and disadvantaged areas. (Beaulac, Kristjansson, Cummins, 2009). In other words, food deserts can simultaneously be “food swamps,” areas consisting in a saturation of access to unhealthy food (e.g., fast-food, convenience stores) and nonfood (e.g., gas stations) venues, characterized by calorie-dense, high-sugar foods (Brown & Brewster, 2015). As such, people living in these areas are at a clear disadvantage to how they obtain food.

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.

Statistically, food deserts are most likely to appear in large urban areas packed with people and housing projects. Some places that people would never even think would be considered a food desert are, ranked in order are, “ New Orleans, Chicago, Atlanta, Memphis, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Detroit, and New York.” According to the article, Americas 9 Worst Urban Food Deserts written by “NEWSONE”. Any catch you off guard? The common

Is Syracuse's “food desert” still a problem? Well, not so much. With a brand new supermarket people can say the city of syracuse is no longer a food desert. But this is just a start, a strong step in the right direction. Sarah Moses explains “The grocery store at 611 South Ave. will be located in an area that community leaders have called a "food desert" because of a lack of affordable grocery stores within easy walking distance for the area's many low-income residents, many of whom do not own cars.” This can force people to buy food at corner stores with high prices and no healthy options. The researchers were trying to find if ethnicity and race are active factors in how people buy food. They believed that ethnicity does have a significant role in how food is purchased. Different ethnic groups will buy different foods at different stores in different places based on their culture.

Food deserts are location that have very little to no access to fresh and nutritious foods. There has been a major jump in the number of area they are classified as a food desert. The Department of Agriculture has mapped out thousands of locations across the country where residents have very limited access to fresh foods. Food deserts are very high in lower income areas. Residents that live in these “are at a greater risk of becoming obese or developing chronic diseases.”

Food desert defines a specific urban area, which lacks affordable food or fresh selection of food such as fruits, vegetables, and meats. Research proves that a food desert does not only occur in poor communities around the world as assumed but can also be found in upscale communities as well. Specifically what distinguishes a food desert is the distance between a local grocery store and one's home residency. Food desert is occurring all over the world which results with 2.35 million Americans live in a food desert and 6.5 million children suffer from food desert community. Food desert is a serious issue that impacts individuals.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), 14.5 percent of U.S. households—nearly 49 million Americans, including 15.9 million children—were food insecure during the year in 2012, meaning they lacked access to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members (ers.usda.gov).  Poverty is the principal cause of hunger, which means that the causes of poverty like lack of education, and unemployment lead up to hunger as well. Hunger is also caused by rising food prices and food deserts like the one the city of Detroit has. In the city of Detroit, the most accessible food-related establishments are party stores, dollar stores, fast-food restaurants and

First, it is an area of low income, with the 2015 census reporting a median household income of $22,894 - 38,139 in the counties of the reservation, well under the United States median of $55,775. According to statistics collected by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Government, the unemployment rate on the reservation in 1999 was 79%, and an additional 61.7% of those employed were below the poverty line. Second, the availability and accessibility of grocery stores carrying healthy foods is limited. Within the borders of the Standing Rock reservation, there are only five grocery stores shown on Google Maps: two Family Dollars, Moser’s Main Street Market, Phil’s Jack and Jill, and White Buffalo Foods. Expanding the area to include to Cheyenne River reservation, which covers 4,266.987 square miles to the south, adds only three others: Lakota Thrifty Mart, Isabel Super Value, and Country Market Grocery. Many reservations in North America meet the criteria to be considered food deserts, but are largely ignored by initiatives that target food deserts because they are only considered sovereign nations when they are not being exploited by the US

According to the report, tax, financial, and zoning incentives have been offered to attract supermarkets to low-income areas since 2009 via a program called FRESH – Food Retail Expansion to Support Health. The FRESH program was established after a 2008 report “Going to Market: New York City’s Neighborhood Grocery Store and Supermarket Shortage” confirmed that there was a shortage of supermarkets in NYC mostly because there is no space available to build and low-income neighborhoods, where many NYCHA properties are, is where supermarkets are needed the most. Also, zoning prohibit stores larger than 10,000 feet from being built without special permits and public review. For perspective, the definition of a supermarket shortage is helpful and is when there is less than 3 square feet of supermarket floor space per capita.

shopping. Rural households generally have greater access to cars, but those that do not— farmworkers for example—have virtually no public transportation available to them to reach stores beyond their immediate communities. Data from USDA suggest that 25 percent more of all occupied housing units report having no access to a vehicle in rural food deserts than in most rural tracts. For urban food deserts, the percentage of households without access to vehicles is anywhere from 24 to 38 percent higher than in other urban areas [8]. With limited transportation, instead of supermarkets or grocery stores, the low-income residents in these communities often must rely on the smaller fast-food restaurants and convenience stores that may not carry all