For all people, having access to wholesome, cheap food is a fundamental right. People who live in food deserts, which are places with little access to cheap and wholesome food options, may find that this is not always the case. Food deserts are most prevalent in low-income metropolitan areas where inhabitants have few mobility choices to reach full-service supermarkets. The issue is intricate and varied because it affects not just people's health but also the local economy. Therefore, it is crucial to consider all options for addressing the issue of food deserts.
Food deserts are a major public health concern in the United States and are on the rise. The bulk of the 23.5 million individuals who live in food deserts are in low-income communities
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Mobile food markets and food trucks have grown in popularity in recent years and now provide a variety of affordable, healthy meal options. Where there are no full-service grocery stores, mobile food markets and food trucks can be put up to give locals easy access to a variety of nutritious food options.
Additionally, tackling the issue of food deserts can greatly benefit from changes in legislation. Government incentives, for instance, may motivate grocery store chains to develop locations in low-income communities. Grocery store chains may find operating a store in certain areas more financially feasible with the help of tax incentives and other financial aid. Additionally, zoning laws can be amended to encourage the construction of full-service grocery stores in low-income areas.
Despite the advantages of these solutions, there are still opponents. For instance, some contend that expanding the number of full-service grocery stores in low-income areas may not always result in more access to a variety of nutritious food options. They claim that grocery stores might not have the varieties of healthy food options that locals are looking for or that the price of healthy meals might still be prohibitively expensive for families with limited resources. Furthermore, the rise of full-service grocery stores may not always result in a stronger local
Food deserts can appear in rural as well as urban areas with lack of market for a grocery store with fresh produce. Of the thirteen and a half million people
Summary and Review of Why is takes more than a Grocery Store to Eliminate a Food Desert Sarah Corapi’s article, Why is takes more than a Grocery Store to Eliminate a Food Desert, addresses the important issue of “food deserts”: the health issues imposed on the people living in these areas, what steps have been made to improve these unacceptable areas, and what work there is yet left to do. In the PBS article Mrs. Corapi interviews Professor Steven Cummins, whom had worked in a study over what kind of impact a new grocery store had made on the people living in a Philadelphia town. The results were more than somewhat shocking. Despite having better access to healthy foods, it seemed that many people remained trapped in their poor eating habits.
Benefits like the experience involved in shopping local, the ability to have access to healthier foods while saving money, and supporting your community, local economy, farmers, and the environment are all great reasons to make someone reevaluate their produce purchases and decide to shop local. Priebe was successfully able to take the concern associated with long-distance food miles and make buying, selling, and producing locally the solutions. Priebe is able to leave her readers with not only an understanding of what becoming a locavore can do for you, your community, but also your world in her article “Benefits of Being a Locavore” while challenging her readers to get out and explore the opportunities of buying locally with the statement “If you’ve never grown your own food or experienced the joy of eating a freshly picked tomato from the farmers’ market, you’re missing out!”
Having an increased variety of foods available, as well as more diverse sources, allows a consumer to make educated and informed choices. As the community itself becomes more invested in the topic of food, there arise “ordinary, middle income folks who have become really engaged in food and really care about where their food comes from” (Source E). As such, they turn to local markets where they know the community members that produce the food and how the food is sourced. These individuals then promote the reasons for buying locally sourced food, as a blog dedicated to eating locally provides, saying that “produce that you purchase at your local farmer’s market has often been picked within 24 hours of your purchase” (Source A). Yet, for all its claims and popular support, the locavore movement also spreads false information.
These areas are often rural and contain a population of people with lower socioeconomic status. Food deserts have been an overlooked issue in the United States for the past few decades. While some nation-wide issues like gun violence lock up front pages of newspapers, the communities that are living in food
Food deserts are a major problem in neighborhoods around the United States and its’ a leading cause of health problems and obesity. Food deserts link to obesity and being obese put someone at more risk of having cancer and diabetes. A food desert is an area where there is lack of grocery stores and limited of healthy whole foods. “The theory of food deserts is that poor people eat poor diets in part because fresh, healthy food is not accessible in areas where they tend to live” ( Wright ). Families in low-income neighborhoods tend to be less healthy than families in high-income neighborhoods due to the unhealthier foods they have to eat.
In West Oakland, California, a neighborhood of 30,000 people populated primarily by African Americans, has one supermarket and thirty- six liquor and convenience stores. Unfortunately, the supermarket is not accessible on foot to most of the area's residents. While the convenience stores are much closer in proximity to the residents, they charge twice as much as grocery stores for identical items. On the flip side, fast food restaurants—selling cheap and food—appear on almost every corner. West Oakland is not unique.
Desert food neighborhoods deprive residents of proper nutrition and increase health risks. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) (n.d.) defines food deserts “as urban neighborhoods and rural towns without ready access to fresh, healthy, and affordable food” (para, 1). An approximated 2.3 million people live in rural food deserts where low-income and low-access community census tracts with a greater than 10-mile proximity to a supermarket exist (USDA, n.d.). In urban areas, a food desert is determined by a greater than 1-mile proximity to a supermarket (USDA, n.d.). In many cases, corner liquor stores with limited food selections with higher cost goods ranging between 3 to 37 cents more are counted as a supermarket based on the
In short, many people around the United States suffer from food instability and hunger. People can’t always help the situations they are in, but there are things almost everyone can do to help the hunger situation in
When prices rise, consumers often move to cheaper, less-nutritious foods, increasing the risks of micronutrient defects and other forms of malnutrition, which can have long-term unfavorable effects on people’s health, development and productivity. Hunger
The rising health problems in the United States of America are caused by poor nutrition, people who are sedentary, the lack of healthcare prevention, and many more. As reported on the Tikkun website, “Of the many systems in our world today that need to be reimagined, none is more important for our future than our food system” (1). The lack of our food system is one of the many factors that has led the United States to its uprising dilemmas; one of the many factors are the food deserts across the U.S. Food deserts are geographic areas where access to affordable healthy and nutritious food are limited, or impossible to purchase, by residents in the area. Food deserts are prone to low-income areas that can’t afford transportation, and due to the lack of grocery stores and supermarkets that sells fresh produce and healthy food within convenient distance to resident’s homes, there is a difficulty in obtaining healthy food options which leads to countless health issues. According to the Diabetes Forecast website, “About 18.3 million Americans live in low-income areas and are far from a supermarket” (1).
“Twenty-two states now have some version of fresh-food financing and there are countless local and nonprofit programs...” They claim that stores are coming to these “claimed” “food desert.” Whereas, about two percent of that population did not have a car that they could use to go to the grocery store (US
These ‘deserts' are even more complex than the unpronounceable chemicals like sodium stearoyl lactylate and azodicarbonamide on food labels. In a city where public transportation is limited to an anemic subway system, supermarkets -- and life expectancies -- remain just as unintegrated as car-constrained neighborhoods. On one side of town, famished families prioritize calories over nutrients. On another, blazer-clad businessmen, fatigued from rush-hour traffic, feel little connection to the underfunded groceries near their inner-city offices. Grocers shy away from 30318 investments, legislators debate retroactive healthcare policies, and identity-conscious kids, the targets of junk-food commercials,
Food Deserts Food deserts are spaces that are at least a mile or more over from any super markets and/or shopping centers. They are usually located in places where most of the people who live there do not have reliable transportation. Most businesses in food deserts have corner stores and fast food restaurants, but there usually are not any healthy food places or choices in the area. Supermarkets have been harshly judged for leaving out a large population of the Black and Latino population in cities such as Memphis, Los Angeles and Detroit. These cities are desperate for more healthy food besides the many fast food places they have to offer.
In a country that wastes billions of pounds of food each year, it's almost shocking that anyone in America goes hungry. Yet every day, there are millions of children and adults who do not get the meals they need to thrive. We work to get nourishing food – from farmers, manufacturers, and retailers – to people in need. At the same time, we also seek to help the people we serve build a path to a brighter, food-secure future.