Living in a Food Desert
Low-income neighborhoods have higher rates of chronic diseases for a reason—they don’t have access to supermarkets that sell fresh fruits and vegetables.
By Cassandra Leveille
May 28, 2009
The obesity epidemic, which swept up media attention in 2003, served as a catalyst to the organic craze, which has become a common household topic. The health benefits of organic and natural foods have been boasted over conventional and processed foods, which have been consistently linked with health issues such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes. With consumers desiring more organic and free-range food, it would seem such selections would be available at every supermarket.
But even though information on healthy foods may be more readily available than before the obesity epidemic, it has not resulted in across-the-board changes for people in all socio-economic classes. A closer look at the situation reveals that healthy food is a privilege. The wealthier you are, the more ability you have to choose a favorable environment where a healthier quality of life, including healthier food, is readily available.
The problem for poor people isn’t just a lack of disposable income to purchase healthier food. For the most part, people in low-income neighborhoods cannot access healthy foods like fresh fruits and vegetables because it is inconvenient or nearly impossible to get to a place that sells them. Areas with limited or no access to local supermarkets are known as a "food deserts." Such places are often littered with convenience stores or fast food restaurants, leaving people with cheap but unhealthy options. Unlike their richer counterparts, poor neighborhoods have 30 percent fewer supermarkets.
Food deserts initially coincided with the "white flight" in the 1960s and ’70s. Supermarkets followed affluent whites into suburban areas, leaving people in low-income areas without access to healthy foods. As a result, establishments that sell unhealthy, over-processed food, like convenience stores and fast-food restaurants, experienced abundant growth in poor areas, leading to higher incidences of chronic diseases like diabetes, obesity, and heart disease.
Stewart Auyash, an associate professor of health promotion and physical education at Ithaca College, noted many investors don’t see it as economically viable to open supermarkets in poor areas. As a result, Auyash says, "the competition isn’t as much between supermarkets and the costs of food increase. It may be hard to believe, but food costs are higher in poorer areas of our country, rural and urban, than in suburban areas, where there are … wealthier people." This is something that DeNeen Brown explored in a recent Washington Post article.
This disparity forces many to travel further for food. The further someone has to travel, the less fresh produce they can purchase. Lesli Calderon, a woman living in a low-income neighborhood in the Portland, Oregon area, lives this reality. An article from The Oregonian reported how, to procure food for her family, Calderon had to take a bus to the closest supermarket, which was more than ten miles away from where she lived and worked.
In New York City, particularly in parts of Brooklyn, and Queens, the problem of lack of supermarket access has been aggravated by the high numbers of establishments that have closed due to the economic crisis. High rents and tight profit margins have contributed to the increased number of closings. In these neighborhoods, pharmacies that sell only high-processed foods have replaced supermarkets, contributing further to health problems.
New York City is taking steps to combat the growing number of food deserts. Scott Stringer, the Manhattan borough president, has proposed tax incentives to supermarkets that open in low-income areas. Others, such as Joel Rivera, the majority leader of the New York City Council, have suggested zoning laws that would create a cap on the number of fast food joints that can get permits in areas with high obesity rates. Such laws have already been implemented in South Los Angeles, where the obesity rate is twice as high as it is in the city’s wealthier areas.
Zoning laws alone, however, will not curb obesity or solve health problems for people in low-income areas, unless used in conjunction with opening more supermarkets that make fresh produce available at an affordable price.
For many, the Obama administration offers hope for changing the massive amount of unhealthy foods Americans are exposed to. However, our current food agenda is largely out of Obama’s hands, by policy set forth in the 2007 Farm Bill.
The Farm Bill legislation is amended every five years and largely determines what products are available for Americans on a mass scale. The original farm bills produced during the Great Depression paid farmers to not overproduce their crops, but the current farm bills promote overproduction of subsidized foods, such as corn. The five foods that receive the highest subsidies are soybeans, corn, wheat, cotton and rice. These products appear in abundance on our supermarket shelves, often in the form of highly processed foods.
Julia Lapp, assistant professor of health promotion and physical education at Ithaca College, also noted many junk foods currently on the market are essentially these same staples in reconstituted forms. "Because the government subsidizes the corn and the wheat, we have a glut of products like this on the market that are very cheap to produce and all you have to do is add vanilla flavor and you’ve got a new variety of Pop Tarts," she says. "You would think, looking at a grocery store aisle, we have a lot of variety but we really don’t have the variety we think we do. We have a variety of flavors, maybe, and forms, but in terms of the ingredients wheat, corn, cheap plant oils, salts, sugar, it’s not as varied as we would think at first glance."
These products are cheaper, but they are not healthier. A partial solution to the lack of affordable healthy food for people in low-income areas could be to subsidize fruits and vegetables instead. Such policies might lead people from all economic backgrounds to incorporate fresh fruits and vegetables into their diets. With local governments giving economic incentives for supermarkets to build in low-income areas, these areas may at last see healthy food flourish again in their neighborhoods.
Cassandra Leveille is a sophomore writing major at Ithaca College. A version of this article originally ran in Buzzsaw, a member of the Campus Progress Publications network.
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Comments
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Excellent piece! I think it’s ridiculous that healthier food options are so hard to find in low-income neighborhoods.
— TL - May 29, 10:33 AM - #