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The Urban Food Desert Myth
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stanmann571 wrote: »Gallowmere1984 wrote: »RosieRose7673 wrote: »ladyannique2017 wrote: »Food deserts in general are not a myth. Yes, it's a myth that all poor urban areas are food deserts, but that doesn't mean food deserts don't exist. I've lived in a few. One was a poor urban area in the Midwest. Yes you can look at a street map and see there is a grocery store within walking distance, but street maps do not take into account gang territories or other hazards between you and the food. I lived in a place where it was not safe to go two blocks uptown which is where the grocery store was due to gang boundaries but I could go ten blocks down the hill to the river where there were bars and corner stores just fine. That area was a kind of a neutral zone because it was run by pimps and their hookers.
Another food desert was also a water desert out in the west when I lived in a single wide trailer in a desperately poor rural area. Nearest grocery store was 45mikes away and although we had plumbing, the tap water wasn't safe to drink (EPA notice about arsenic in water) so my dad had to use our beat up rusted out truck to bring home a tank of water every week as well as food.
Electricity wasn't too dependable in either place...urban or country and so we couldn't buy fresh veg or meat because it would rot to nothing in a day. Lots of canned and dried foods. I think people assume everyone has access to a refrigerator/freezer when many poor people don't.
Thank you very much for posting this. I really feel that it is very easy for people to put horse blinders on when it comes to this.
It's very easy to say that there's a supermarket a mile away. Why don't they go there?
I live in Chicago currently and in a decent part of the city. However, for my job, I did have to travel to very high crime, poor areas. I've met a family who lived in an unfinished basement. 3 kids and a mom who was taking online classes to get a better job. However, the area was extremely dangerous. Homicides are high in the area as well as gang violence. Sure, if they could hop in a car and drive to a supermarket a mile or so away, they could. BUT- when you don't have a car, don't have any money to spare and have to walk that all the way to a supermarket that far with 3 kids in a high crime area, it's not the super market they are looking for. They are looking for something to eat that's both affordable and safe to get. Often times, that may mean the corner convenience store.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you look a statistics about proximity to supermarkets, it's easy to overlook other factors that can influence the ability to get fresh food.
This is another area where I am admittedly biased. I have lived in "the hood" in multiple cities over the years, and never once had a problem out of anyone. We'd regularly have people shot in the parking lots of two of the places I live, yet I never got so much as a sideways glance. I attribute this to the fact that I mind my own damned business, and never got tangled up in the things that tend to get people shot (drug money, *kitten* with someone's wife/girlfriend, having a big mouth, etc.)
I don't give a damn if someone got capped right under my window, I didn't crack the blinds, I didn't see *kitten*, it's not my business. So yeah, even fat and nerdy whitey can live in some nasty neighborhoods without incident, if you know what you are doing. vOv
Growing up in the "deepest inner city" as a pasty white kid that was my experience as well.
Certainly, there's a bit of art to walking such that you present as neither victim nor competition, but it can certainly be done.
It's interesting that males are the ones asserting this confidence.19 -
GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »Gallowmere1984 wrote: »RosieRose7673 wrote: »ladyannique2017 wrote: »Food deserts in general are not a myth. Yes, it's a myth that all poor urban areas are food deserts, but that doesn't mean food deserts don't exist. I've lived in a few. One was a poor urban area in the Midwest. Yes you can look at a street map and see there is a grocery store within walking distance, but street maps do not take into account gang territories or other hazards between you and the food. I lived in a place where it was not safe to go two blocks uptown which is where the grocery store was due to gang boundaries but I could go ten blocks down the hill to the river where there were bars and corner stores just fine. That area was a kind of a neutral zone because it was run by pimps and their hookers.
Another food desert was also a water desert out in the west when I lived in a single wide trailer in a desperately poor rural area. Nearest grocery store was 45mikes away and although we had plumbing, the tap water wasn't safe to drink (EPA notice about arsenic in water) so my dad had to use our beat up rusted out truck to bring home a tank of water every week as well as food.
Electricity wasn't too dependable in either place...urban or country and so we couldn't buy fresh veg or meat because it would rot to nothing in a day. Lots of canned and dried foods. I think people assume everyone has access to a refrigerator/freezer when many poor people don't.
Thank you very much for posting this. I really feel that it is very easy for people to put horse blinders on when it comes to this.
It's very easy to say that there's a supermarket a mile away. Why don't they go there?
I live in Chicago currently and in a decent part of the city. However, for my job, I did have to travel to very high crime, poor areas. I've met a family who lived in an unfinished basement. 3 kids and a mom who was taking online classes to get a better job. However, the area was extremely dangerous. Homicides are high in the area as well as gang violence. Sure, if they could hop in a car and drive to a supermarket a mile or so away, they could. BUT- when you don't have a car, don't have any money to spare and have to walk that all the way to a supermarket that far with 3 kids in a high crime area, it's not the super market they are looking for. They are looking for something to eat that's both affordable and safe to get. Often times, that may mean the corner convenience store.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you look a statistics about proximity to supermarkets, it's easy to overlook other factors that can influence the ability to get fresh food.
This is another area where I am admittedly biased. I have lived in "the hood" in multiple cities over the years, and never once had a problem out of anyone. We'd regularly have people shot in the parking lots of two of the places I live, yet I never got so much as a sideways glance. I attribute this to the fact that I mind my own damned business, and never got tangled up in the things that tend to get people shot (drug money, *kitten* with someone's wife/girlfriend, having a big mouth, etc.)
I don't give a damn if someone got capped right under my window, I didn't crack the blinds, I didn't see *kitten*, it's not my business. So yeah, even fat and nerdy whitey can live in some nasty neighborhoods without incident, if you know what you are doing. vOv
It's one thing to put yourself out there to walk through that. I would think that you'd tend to think differently when you have to drag 2 or 3 kids through it or think about maybe leaving them alone and unsupervised at home to go to the grocery store.
There are too many statistics on innocent bystanders being hurt for a parent to even think about putting a child at risk.
I do not have children, but my best friend and his family (wife and three girls aged 5-8) shared an apartment with me for some time. They had no problems either, and didn't own a car outside of his company truck which was GPSed so he couldn't use it for random running. They walked to stores.
That said, the wife and kids didn't go out often when he wasn't with them, unless just going to the playground area in the complex, or something.1 -
This popped up in my FB memories today. Tell me a poor person would choose the blueberries when they have 4 mouths to feed. I dare you3 -
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Gallowmere1984 wrote: »
Frozen or not, calorie for calorie I'd have a tough time justifying berries over something that would fill my kids' bellies if I was poor. Not to mention that they may work two jobs and the convenience of a 5 minute meal that's cheap is probably very attractive. I'm not saying it can't be done but the likelihood is slim.
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I wouldn't choose either (I can get prices on frozen berries like Gallomere mentions and buy them). Also, although blueberries are not in season right now here (as in most of the US), you can get a pint or a bit under 300 g for around 2.99 usually even now. I checked specials for my closest store and blueberries aren't on special, but blackberries are, for 69 cents for 6 oz (170 g), or $1.17 for the amount featured in that ad, so I am skeptical about that being a normal price for non-organic berries. Here at the moment organic blueberries are cheaper, even.
Bigger issue is that I know someone is not serious about comparing eating healthfully and non healthfully when you include soda. Soda has no nutrients, it's a pure luxury good. It makes no sense to compare it to a food that you would have for a meal. (It's also dirt cheap to make, most of the cost is packaging and marketing.)
Some of those packaged goods can be loss leaders too. Mac and cheese (which is not in my mind an actual meal) is often quite cheap, yeah. Other things, some of which take more work, are quite cheap also. The question -- and since this seems to be a common rhetorical strategy -- this is asked sincerely: what is the point of pulling out one individual nutrient-dense food that happens to be overpriced or high priced in one example and comparing it to some low nutrient snacky food that happens to be cheap. Yeah, lots of packaged stuff in the US is cheap -- how does that hurt people or would it help people to make it more costly? Hardly.
The real question is whether the actual cost of preparing a healthful meal is in and of itself expensive. The data suggests that when it comes to cost as percentage of income it's not expensive in the US (in part because our meat and eggs and dairy are quite cheap compared to lots of places), and -- significantly -- it's been declining over time. Why? In part because we can get things like frozen and even out of season have markets flooded with produce from all over.
In my supermarket, there seems to be a huge market for convenience goods in produce -- basically fresh (or "fresh") produce pre-cut. I think this is a terrible deal -- it's marked up enormously and goes bad fast and usually tastes worse (because it starts going bad before you buy it). Also bagged greens (which I do buy), baby cut carrots, and of course way marked up organic options and things way out of season. If people weren't (generally) able to buy produce because they were so expensive, all of this stuff (which the blueberries in the example might be related to) would not be such a booming market.
That I can go buy overpriced mangoes (actually mangos have a decent deal right now) and avocados and fish at WF, which I could, does not change the fact that I actually could buy an extremely healthful week's worth of food for quite a low price. Now, can everyone? That's the food desert issue and I do think it's harder for some, but claiming that Kraft is too cheap (or pop) and some random blueberries are crazy high doesn't really address the problem.
Glad no one on my FB feed goes on about such things, or I'd get unfriended or blocked, probably, LOL!
(Also, I will never call it Kraft Dinner. What is this some Canadian nightmare term? It's Kraft mac and cheese.)3 -
This popped up in my FB memories today. Tell me a poor person would choose the blueberries when they have 4 mouths to feed. I dare you
False dichotomy, like juxtaposing Hot Pockets and caviar, instead of Hot Pockets and chicken thighs. Traditionally the poor have made prudent yet healthy choices like cabbage and potatoes.
Edited to correct Hit Pickets, which would be a really cool product.6 -
dp
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Besides the food dessert idea, this is missing the cost of fresh fruits and vegetables compared to the cost of processed food. It is also not accounting for the cost of a gym membership if an neighborhood does not have safe access to a park. It also does not account for the cost of health insurance for poorer populations who may not be able to afford to go to the doctor to regularly find out that they should be losing weight and the cost for a nutritionist. For those families that are working several jobs, putting food on the table regardless of what kind of food, because they are too tired or do not have access to the internet at home to research how to cook more nutritious meals....This is missing a lot about numerous studies linking obesity and poverty.
While their definition of a food dessert includes fast food and corner stores is different than many of the studies I have read. Most define the food dessert as not having access to fresh fruits and vegetables within a 1/4 mile walk as food dessert. I know that isn't true in my neighborhood. I also find that the fruits and vegetables at corner stores and fast food places are more expensive than processed food, even at grocery stores. So yes there are many, many factors going into the problem.4 -
daniellestellrecht wrote: »Besides the food dessert idea, this is missing the cost of fresh fruits and vegetables compared to the cost of processed food. It is also not accounting for the cost of a gym membership if an neighborhood does not have safe access to a park. It also does not account for the cost of health insurance for poorer populations who may not be able to afford to go to the doctor to regularly find out that they should be losing weight and the cost for a nutritionist. For those families that are working several jobs, putting food on the table regardless of what kind of food, because they are too tired or do not have access to the internet at home to research how to cook more nutritious meals....This is missing a lot about numerous studies linking obesity and poverty.
While their definition of a food dessert includes fast food and corner stores is different than many of the studies I have read. Most define the food dessert as not having access to fresh fruits and vegetables within a 1/4 mile walk as food dessert. I know that isn't true in my neighborhood. I also find that the fruits and vegetables at corner stores and fast food places are more expensive than processed food, even at grocery stores. So yes there are many, many factors going into the problem.
- a quarter mile is just three blocks. Seems an unreasonable standard to demand cities have a greengrocer every six blocks especially in neighborhoods where you apparently get shot as soon as you poke your nose out the door or some such.
- Convicts manage to get in fabulous shape in little tiny cells, so I am not sure why everyone needs access to an official gym to get started. I am going to start my own boot camp where I make people walk 2 mikes and carry 40 lbs of beans in a backpack. It is going to be VERY expensive to take my class.
- On the question of fresh produce, you may want to review this thread, in which it is established that canned and frozen veg are perfectly acceptable alternatives to fresh, and there is a lot of fresh available very economically. http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10527034/wish-fresh-veggies-werent-so-expensive/p1
- On the question of internet access, it is a shame that these communities have no lonely old ladies (or men) who would weep tears of joy to be able to spend time with a young person and share their cooking skills. Maybe someone with a PhD should get a grant and do a study to determine how people got recipes and skills before the interwebs were invented.9 -
Gallowmere1984 wrote: »
Try getting those home on a three switch bus line and 5 blocks walk in July though. and don't talk to me about those frozen ice packs that are so convenient!
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Gallowmere1984 wrote: »
Try getting those home on a three switch bus line and 5 blocks walk in July though. and don't talk to me about those frozen ice packs that are so convenient!
So some planning is required, maybe shop on the weekend with the trolly.
Having to plan things is a *kitten*, totally not fair to people.2 -
Gallowmere1984 wrote: »Yup, life's not fair to people who don't have cars. Obama's cash for clunker's program should have been used to give them cars, so life would be more equal.
But life isn't equal and people in suburbia and rural areas have their own set of issues, especially if they are poor.
This was something I had thought about. The focus is often in urban areas, but due to their very nature, things tend to be relatively close. One would think, the truly screwed are the poor who live in areas where it can be 60+ miles to a reasonably sized town. However, these people often tend to be cash poor, but environment resourceful, so to speak.
Exactly! I live on the west side of Buffalo, and have a bunch of grocery stores within 2 miles (and multiple bus lines much closer). I can't think of ANY areas w/in my city where you would be more than half a mile from a bus route that has a full-fledged supermarket on it. In comparison, getting to & from work generally requires a bunch of bus/subway transfers. If someone opts to be lazy and waddle 200 ft to the bodega for chips instead of grabbing a backpack and getting on the bus, that is totally on them. Many little old ladies manage to do it just fine with their pull carts. And no- when you are poor, you don't go to multiple stores...you go to the one that is most convenient of those with reasonable prices and deal with the selection they have.
Now, poor rural areas are a different story. You are pretty much screwed if you don't have a car outside of the city.
Other people tend to forget that people ate a certain way in the winter in the north for a reason. If it looks like the frozen tundra outside, don't *kitten* that strawberries and broccoli are expensive. No *kitten*. It's a luxury of the modern age that we can buy these items up here at all in the winter at any price. Traditional northern soup vegetables are generally quite cheap.Gallowmere1984 wrote: »Yup, life's not fair to people who don't have cars. Obama's cash for clunker's program should have been used to give them cars, so life would be more equal.
But life isn't equal and people in suburbia and rural areas have their own set of issues, especially if they are poor.
This was something I had thought about. The focus is often in urban areas, but due to their very nature, things tend to be relatively close. One would think, the truly screwed are the poor who live in areas where it can be 60+ miles to a reasonably sized town. However, these people often tend to be cash poor, but environment resourceful, so to speak.
Exactly! I live on the west side of Buffalo, and have a bunch of grocery stores within 2 miles (and multiple bus lines much closer). I can't think of ANY areas w/in my city where you would be more than half a mile from a bus route that has a full-fledged supermarket on it. In comparison, getting to & from work generally requires a bunch of bus/subway transfers. If someone opts to be lazy and waddle 200 ft to the bodega for chips instead of grabbing a backpack and getting on the bus, that is totally on them. Many little old ladies manage to do it just fine with their pull carts. And no- when you are poor, you don't go to multiple stores...you go to the one that is most convenient of those with reasonable prices and deal with the selection they have.
Now, poor rural areas are a different story. You are pretty much screwed if you don't have a car outside of the city.
Other people tend to forget that people ate a certain way in the winter in the north for a reason. If it looks like the frozen tundra outside, don't *kitten* that strawberries and broccoli are expensive. No *kitten*. It's a luxury of the modern age that we can buy these items up here at all in the winter at any price. Traditional northern soup vegetables are generally quite cheap.
The thing is Ritz, is that a bag of chips is just so much lighter to carry than a pound of potatoes when you have to take three or four public transits and wait in between and walk several blocks and up stairs to your shabby little apartment to and from the food source.
A lot bulkier though for what you get. . All that air takes up valuable space in a backpack compared to raw potatoes.
yeah, good words. Dried lentils could be the answer, not heavy, inexpensive, low volume, reasonably fast cooking bean with high value protien for a veg. so packable and their shelf life is good too.
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Gallowmere1984 wrote: »
Try getting those home on a three switch bus line and 5 blocks walk in July though. and don't talk to me about those frozen ice packs that are so convenient!
So some planning is required, maybe shop on the weekend with the trolly.
Having to plan things is a *kitten*, totally not fair to people.
I'm talking people with low incomes, no cars, long distance from food sources.
We didn't even mention elderly people who find some of the physical aspects of public transit and grocery shopping a little bit more difficult than normal.
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Gallowmere1984 wrote: »
Try getting those home on a three switch bus line and 5 blocks walk in July though. and don't talk to me about those frozen ice packs that are so convenient!
So some planning is required, maybe shop on the weekend with the trolly.
Having to plan things is a *kitten*, totally not fair to people.
They'd still melt. Being frozen and all that.......4 -
Theo, I think the definition of "food desert" has to be discussed not only in what you classify as food, but what you look at in terms of affordability and ability to buy even if the food exists there.
Poor areas tend to have less access to transportation in the city. 75% of our poorer superb dwellers (especially the minorities) rely on public transit and convenience stores that sell chips, crackers and white bread close to their homes to survive. Sure, that's considered food. But should it be? Other than the fact that they have calories and they're fortified with something doesn't make them something you should regularly eat. Does it matter that there's a supermarket 10 blocks away of it takes an hour to wait for a bus, 30 bus ride minutes, $2.50 one way and then the trip back with enough calories to keep you full for a week that have to fit into a few bags? Absolutely.
If bananas, spinach, oranges, nuts and cucumbers are available but too expensive to buy to last a whole week and too heavy to carry for poorer people, is it still considered a food desert? It should be. Plus, I find produce cheaper and of much better quality in the rich suburbs (I work in the biggest farmers market at the center of the city where everyone has access- but the rich suburbs have a huge price break) and those are places full of rather affluent folks With lots of cars and Very few buses. Because they don't have to take heavy bags on the bus, they can buy more fresh fruits and vegetables each week. And they have more money to buy more quantity to fill that trunk with. Turnover is greater and quality can improve. Poor people can carry crackers and chips on the bus. And bread. Maybe lunch meat if they're lucky. Their produce selection tends to stink because there's less turnover because you can't lug 40lbs of produce to feed a small family around when you use public transit. No impoverished person in their right mind is going to buy a wilted pepper, either. So the fresh foods supply is encouraged to go down.
Are you seeing the problem?
Next time you buy all your healthy, fresh food for the week- try walking home with it all. I promise that your arms will go numb after a block or two. This is the problem in my city. The one with too many farmers markets that folks drive to- except in the poorer suburbs because nobody can carry so much food so far each week and they don't have cars.6 -
French_Peasant wrote: »daniellestellrecht wrote: »Besides the food dessert idea, this is missing the cost of fresh fruits and vegetables compared to the cost of processed food. It is also not accounting for the cost of a gym membership if an neighborhood does not have safe access to a park. It also does not account for the cost of health insurance for poorer populations who may not be able to afford to go to the doctor to regularly find out that they should be losing weight and the cost for a nutritionist. For those families that are working several jobs, putting food on the table regardless of what kind of food, because they are too tired or do not have access to the internet at home to research how to cook more nutritious meals....This is missing a lot about numerous studies linking obesity and poverty.
While their definition of a food dessert includes fast food and corner stores is different than many of the studies I have read. Most define the food dessert as not having access to fresh fruits and vegetables within a 1/4 mile walk as food dessert. I know that isn't true in my neighborhood. I also find that the fruits and vegetables at corner stores and fast food places are more expensive than processed food, even at grocery stores. So yes there are many, many factors going into the problem.
- a quarter mile is just three blocks. Seems an unreasonable standard to demand cities have a greengrocer every six blocks especially in neighborhoods where you apparently get shot as soon as you poke your nose out the door or some such.
Two blocks in Chicago! That standard would put me in a food desert, and I have great access to groceries.On the question of internet access, it is a shame that these communities have no lonely old ladies (or men) who would weep tears of joy to be able to spend time with a young person and share their cooking skills. Maybe someone with a PhD should get a grant and do a study to determine how people got recipes and skills before the interwebs were invented.
Yes, but then I just feel old, since I never had the internet when I was learning to cook.
Also, both the internet and cookbooks are still at the public library.
I do think obesity and poverty are linked for reasons in part discussed in this thread. I don't think we have to blame the cost of gym memberships and the internet, though, or have unreasonable standards for how close a supermarket should be.
It would be interesting to compare with 1955 on some of this stuff. My guess is that people had to walk farther, on average, but in some neighborhoods there probably would have been more options. But that would be contrasted with the fact food in general was less available and more expensive.2 -
Gallowmere1984 wrote: »
Try getting those home on a three switch bus line and 5 blocks walk in July though. and don't talk to me about those frozen ice packs that are so convenient!
For what percentage of people would this be required to get home from a supermarket? Remember the definition of the food desert in the US according to the USDA is more than 1 mile in an urban area and more than 10 miles in a rural area. For the latter I can imagine it's tough to get good public transportation, of course.
And part of the issue with the fresh berries being expensive is it's March. They are generally much cheaper in July (although I think they are cheaper now here -- the pint of blackberries for 69 cents I mentioned aren't too hard to carry).0 -
i think where I live could be called a food desert, even though it is actually a valley. We have no local produce in the winter time unless one chooses to consider tree parts as produce. Any produce in the grocery stores is shipped in from parts most often unknown and is pretty much tasteless.
It is also about 5 miles from our house to the nearest grocery store. And we do not live in a "poverty area". Just the older end of town.
Most of my friends can/freeze produce when available. I buy canned/frozen, because I'm older and lazy. Been there done that.1
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