. The term “food desert” was first defined by a British Low Income Project team as “areas of relative exclusion where people experience physical and economic barriers to accessing healthy foods”. (Reisig and Hobbiss). This description is in reference to the recent shift of food retailers away from urban areas into suburban developments. This is significant because it illustrates that where you live has a direct influence on access to food, and consequently, the quality of food readily available. Food deserts are often completely devoid of whole-food providing supermarkets and contain a substantial amount of convenience stores and fast food chains. Consequently, the area in which people live can have a dramatic effect on …show more content…
If the collected people within the census region is below 500 or the average housing with low access (beyond 1 mile) is at least 33 percent, then the census tract is considered a food desert (USDA-ERS). Over the past few decades, research on food deserts has become broader and has expanded into a more socio-economic project. The most common examinations have focused on systematically reviewing the evidence for food deserts, specifically focusing on socioeconomically disadvantaged regions. These districts are perhaps more alarming due to a process of “deprivation amplification”, which is the concept that poorer areas have fewer environmental and community resources; an observation that is proposed to be a factor in the existence of amplified household poverty. (Macintyre). There are various influences such as economics and demographics that can contribute to the occurrence of food deserts. These have been heavily researched and documented. Various studies commonly apply a blend of geographic and market-based approaches to examine the causes of food deserts throughout the world. Research in the United States has indicated that there is clear evidence for disparities in food access by income and race, however, findings from other high-income countries were sparse and ambiguous (Beaulac et.al.) The anomaly behind the findings in the food desert research throughout the United States could
Healthy eating is vital to eliminating sickness and diseases in one’s life. Many people suffer from diabetes, obesity, heart conditions, and high blood pressure because of improper eating habits. To a degree, most of these eating habits are related to limited access to produce healthy foods. The increasing amount of food deserts and lack of family income contributes to African-American obesity rates, and lack of healthy choices. Ironically, these food desserts reside in communities plagued by poverty. These income restrictions also add to the problems that are part of being in a food desert.
The ground is dry and cracked, soil is nonexistent, and anything verdant or lush is nowhere to be found. These attributes are applied to deserts, where precipitation rarely occurs. While most life in a traditional desert is on a desperate search for water, another type of desert exists where this desperate search is for healthy food. These are known as food deserts. Food deserts are areas that lack sources of fresh food, such as grocery stores and farmers’ markets (Gallagher). Instead, food deserts only have stores that sell cheap, unhealthy food. As a result, people living in food deserts are much more likely to be obese due to this prevalence of unhealthy food (“Diet and Obesity”). With all of these health problems arising from food deserts, how should the problem of food deserts
Food deserts are one of the main causes of obesity in lower income areas, and while initiatives are being created to solve this problem, more than just a few initiatives are needed to change the obesity issue.
One huge problem that the United States faces today are the large numbers of food deserts. A food desert, according to the United States department of Agriculture, is a neighborhood that has a difficult time getting quality and affordable food to their home. This means that people are not properly being fed and getting the nutrition needed for a healthy diet. The good quality food that is needed to maintain this balance is not near or affordable for the people living in these areas. Food deserts affect many people across the United States, especially those that are on the lower end of the social economic spectrum and live in rural areas. Many of these low-income families do not have the means to get to the supermarket and get the right products they need so they settle for lower quality but more cost efficient foods. A great example for a food desert would be the great city of Chicago who is ranked in the top two worst food deserts in the United State according to newsone.com.
The issues of obesity and food deserts are important, and many people have questions about these topics. What makes this important though? To dig even deeper, what are the significant factors of both topics? The answer to the most pressing subject of modern times will now be determined.
Many of the people living in food deserts are people with low income. These low-income families often turn to the junk food provided at the convenience stores and fast food restaurants because it is all they can afford. Socio-economic status is a defining characteristic of food deserts. Food deserts are most commonly found in areas dominated by minorities and low-income families. Studies show that wealthy areas have about triple the amount of supermarkets as poor urban areas do. In addition to this, predominantly white communities have about 4 times as many grocery stores as predominantly black ones do. Studies also show that grocery stores in African-American neighborhoods are usually smaller and have less option when it comes to the
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.
Hundreds of thousands of Chicagoans live in what’s known as a food desert. A food desert is in an area of focus that is short on access to fresh meat and produce. These areas are usually over populated with packaged and processed foods, which are not always healthy. They also have a significant amount junk that you can easily find in convenience stores and fast food restaurants.
(2009) also found that prices did not match the economic status of the region. A study within the U.S. found prices to be higher in low income areas; though, there were mixed results according to area income and race in other studies (Beaulac et al., 2009). Residents within these regions may suffer from deprivation amplification, in which the already disadvantaged are further deprived when they are located in a food desert. The last two studies reviewed were specific to the Texas region and provided a more focused look at the burdens precipitated by rurality. Sharkey and Horel (2008) looked at spatial disparities associated with rurality within a six county-rural region of Texas. They found that distance decreased with increasing deprivation, minority composition, and population density; additionally, some of the most impoverished neighborhoods with the greatest minority composition had better potential spatial access to the nearest grocery stores (Sharkey & Horel, 2008). This finding was surprising, yet, over 20% of all rural resident neighborhoods were at least 17.7 km from the nearest supermarket or grocery store and 7.6 km from the nearest convenience store (Sharkey & Horel, 2008). The close proximity of convenient stores to rural residents within this region may lead to the purchase of more
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
The concept of a Food Desert is not new, “British politicians introduced the idea of food deserts in the mid-1990s… suggested a link might exist between distance to a grocery store and the diets of poor people” (Gilligan, 2014). It took many years before the idea of a Food Desert was recognized in the United States of America but it is now estimated that, “About 23.5 million people live in food deserts” ("11 Facts About Food Deserts | DoSomething.org | Volunteer for Social Change," n.d.). The inability to obtain healthy food choices leads to, “people in low-income communities [suffering] more from diet-related diseases like obesity and diabetes” (Truehaft & Karpyn, 5, n.d.). The existence of these Food Deserts is a factor that works to keep those in poverty down and makes progress even harder for them to
Many people that lives in food deserts has tremendous possibility of being obese because the community in whole eats a lot of processed food, but some can become obese due to how they eat and burn those calories. Another health problem that people in a food desert can face is diabetes because majority of the food they eat has a lot of sugar in the food they eat. Even though, there are a lot of other health problems too, but one of the most major one is the following: cardio respiratory because the fellow person could die, but it also increases the rate of death in the US. Due to the problems of why we can’t get healthy food, our country’s obesity and death rate has gone up.
Ayesha’s starting lines “Englewood or Egypt, Bedstuy or Baghdad…the west bank or the westside of Chicago(Ayesha)”, alludes to comparisons between impoverished nations overseas to impoverished areas of our country that generally occupied by minorities. This gets the ball rolling on the crux of problems that people in the ghetto face, poverty being one of them. One of these results of poverty that Ayesha mentions are that of food deserts. Wright defines “Food Deserts”, “low-income communities with a poverty rate of 20% or
The United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) atlas on food deserts shows that most food deserts in California are in highly rural (USDA, 2017). Northern California, the Mojave Desert, and the Imperial Valley all have a high prevalence of food deserts (USDA, 2017). A closer look at the map also shows a significant amount of food deserts in urban areas of highly populated cities. Large portions of neighborhoods in urban areas like Los Angeles, San Diego, and Sacramento are food deserts (USDA, 2017). In this section, we will discuss the socio-economic characteristics of the people living in both types of food
“Food Desert” refers to an area in a rural or even urban region with little or no access to big grocery stores that provides affordable and fresh food for people to have a healthy diet. These areas are mostly composed of low-income households who are often Hispanics and African-Americans (Ploeg and Breneman et al). They are often “trapped” in a geographical location where only small convenient stores, which do not have sufficient supply of all common, fresh and healthy food, are available. Currently, there are 13.6 Million Americans who have difficulties in accessing to super markets and large grocery stores. People living in such areas with limited access to grocery stores spend 19.5 minutes more to travel, comparing to the people living in non-food-desert areas (Ploeg and Breneman et al).