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The Urban Food Desert Myth

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  • Theo166
    Theo166 Posts: 2,564 Member
    VintageFeline wrote: »
    Theo166 wrote: »
    Gamliela wrote: »
    Gallowmere1984 wrote: »
    fascha wrote: »
    8ruvecg5yvjk.png

    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

    This is why I buy frozen berries. $9 for 3 lbs.

    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.......

    I use an insulated bag for my frozen stuff, bring it into the store so things don't melt while I'm still wandering the aisles shopping. I would expect someone lugging food to have figured out a solution to insulate their frozen goods. Just packing frozen veggies together and wrapping in a towel does wonders.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    edited March 2017
    southernoregongrape wrote: »
    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.

    Wouldn't most northern places have no or limited local produce in the winter? (This is one reason I always get annoyed when people suggest that "processing" is bad -- it, and other unnatural things like bringing food in from far away, has really made produce more available for the majority of us who live in northern climates.)
    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.

    As I noted before, the definition (USDA, anyway) is more than 10 miles in a rural area, more than 1 mile in an urban area (well, technically it's more complicated, has to do with percentage in your census tract who fits those), but in addition to that it takes into account % in the tract who own cars or who have a low income. Under the alternative .5 mile considered for an urban area, mine would be a "food desert" under the distance and car elements, but then would be disqualified since it's not a low income tract (upper middle class, instead). If yours is not in a poverty area it probably would be too, and of course if people have cars it also would be.

    It would also be really goofy to include my area even on the availability criteria, since it's really easy to get to a store. (For the record I say this as someone who regularly walks 1.5 miles to one store and walks a mile there and back to another, although more often I combine with my commute so I can walk just one way. Today I walked 1.25 miles to church and then .5 miles from there to a store about a mile from my house and then considered walking home but I had bought a bunch of heavy things and my legs were tired from my long run earlier so I decided to take the bus home.)

    It definitely is more of a problem and the food on offer is worse in other areas of the city, no question. I'm not denying that.
  • Gallowmere1984
    Gallowmere1984 Posts: 6,626 Member
    HeliumIsNoble wrote: »
    Gallowmere1984 wrote: »
    After reading these last few posts, I think I am starting to see the real problem.

    Unless you are 75, physically handicapped, or a literal midget, there is no reason in the world why walking a couple of miles while carrying 20-30 pounds in a duffel should be considered unreasonable. Holy *kitten* people are lazy as *kitten*.
    Those categories cover a lot more people than you might think. There are lot of people who look physically in prime health, but aren't. Case in point being one of my in-laws who has had lifelong back issues, leading up to a slipped disc (possibly two?). She now has metal plates in her spine, along with strict instructions from her surgeon not to put strain on her back! She's a fair bit under 75, too.

    I also wouldn't call 20-30 pounds a weekly shop for a family of four. As it happens, this morning, I cycled to a supermarket that's 2.3 miles from my house, for the sake of its wider stock and lower prices (for some items). This isn't something I do at the drop of a hat, because I can only do this when I'm free and the children are with someone else, or at school.

    I didn't really buy anything like a weekly shop at all, so I would call what I got a "moderate" shop. For me- I'm more tight-fisted about bus fares than most of my friends and family, and so tend to be more willing to carry heavier shopping further.

    In the interests of science, I weighed it when I got back- 12.1kg, or 26lbs. "Pretty light", do I hear you say? Well wait up. This isn't just about weight, it is also about volume. For example, cauliflowers aren't that heavy, but they would take up a lot of room. The stuff I bought filled up two panniers on my bike, and my handbasket on the front.

    As it happens, I have a 65 kilogram capacity (143.3 lb- more than I weigh, and certainly more than today's shop!) rucksack, which I use on a regular enough basis to know that my shopping today would not have fitted into it, if I had gone on foot.

    Sidenote: really, I need at least a 75 kg capacity rucksack, but the 75 kg rucksacks I've tried on are too bulky for me to carry because I'm too short for them. I'm not a midget either.

    This would be why I grocery shop almost daily, personally. It only adds about 30 minutes to the whole affair, and gives me further incentive to get off of my *kitten* and move.

    This is something that I promise we'll probably never agree on, as walking 6 miles per day is what I consider bare minimum. On my "rest" days when I don't lift, I'm more likely to hit the 10-18 mile range.
  • HeliumIsNoble
    HeliumIsNoble Posts: 1,213 Member
    tomteboda wrote: »
    I get so irritated because this seems like a type of bigotry of low expectations going on here. Oh the poor are too dumb or stupid to figure out that rice and beans and chicken legs/thighs will stretch a budget a lot farther, and too lazy to cook (although they can run a microwave), and too unknowledgeable to realize that much packaged food is selling a lot of salt and fat and little else.

    That's probably not what any individual poster intended, but that's what I, as someone who has spent the majority of their life on an exceptionally tight budget, who has walked or biked more than 3 miles to the grocery store, and used public transit when available for the same trips, as someone who has grown tomatoes in pots and rented an unwatered garden plot that I had to haul water in during the summer by the jug; that's what I hear.
    For myself, I was less thinking laziness, and more thinking about simply having nothing other than a microwave. Bed-sits and hostels with no full kitchen, emergency accommodation, broken cookers, et cetera.


  • HeliumIsNoble
    HeliumIsNoble Posts: 1,213 Member
    edited March 2017
    Gallowmere1984 wrote: »
    HeliumIsNoble wrote: »
    Gallowmere1984 wrote: »
    After reading these last few posts, I think I am starting to see the real problem.

    Unless you are 75, physically handicapped, or a literal midget, there is no reason in the world why walking a couple of miles while carrying 20-30 pounds in a duffel should be considered unreasonable. Holy *kitten* people are lazy as *kitten*.
    Those categories cover a lot more people than you might think. There are lot of people who look physically in prime health, but aren't. Case in point being one of my in-laws who has had lifelong back issues, leading up to a slipped disc (possibly two?). She now has metal plates in her spine, along with strict instructions from her surgeon not to put strain on her back! She's a fair bit under 75, too.

    I also wouldn't call 20-30 pounds a weekly shop for a family of four. As it happens, this morning, I cycled to a supermarket that's 2.3 miles from my house, for the sake of its wider stock and lower prices (for some items). This isn't something I do at the drop of a hat, because I can only do this when I'm free and the children are with someone else, or at school.

    I didn't really buy anything like a weekly shop at all, so I would call what I got a "moderate" shop. For me- I'm more tight-fisted about bus fares than most of my friends and family, and so tend to be more willing to carry heavier shopping further.

    In the interests of science, I weighed it when I got back- 12.1kg, or 26lbs. "Pretty light", do I hear you say? Well wait up. This isn't just about weight, it is also about volume. For example, cauliflowers aren't that heavy, but they would take up a lot of room. The stuff I bought filled up two panniers on my bike, and my handbasket on the front.

    As it happens, I have a 65 kilogram capacity (143.3 lb- more than I weigh, and certainly more than today's shop!) rucksack, which I use on a regular enough basis to know that my shopping today would not have fitted into it, if I had gone on foot.

    Sidenote: really, I need at least a 75 kg capacity rucksack, but the 75 kg rucksacks I've tried on are too bulky for me to carry because I'm too short for them. I'm not a midget either.

    This would be why I grocery shop almost daily, personally. It only adds about 30 minutes to the whole affair, and gives me further incentive to get off of my *kitten* and move.

    This is something that I promise we'll probably never agree on, as walking 6 miles per day is what I consider bare minimum. On my "rest" days when I don't lift, I'm more likely to hit the 10-18 mile range.
    Actually, I walk quite a bit as well. If I do absolutely nothing in the day but the bare minimum of being a responsible adult, I'm at 3 miles, through just taking the kids to school and back. As I am constantly shopping (at least it feels like it), due to not having a car, I'll be going much further than that per day...

    But the point is that all this takes time. When the children aren't at school, I am confined much nearer to base, because they can't walk as far or as fast as me (my top walking speed is 6km per hour according to a treadmill, but I know from observation that my children can only manage about 1.2 km an hour) and we still need to fit in the rest of daily life, like homework, playing, school projects, having time to eat the fricking food we bought today...
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    Gallowmere1984 wrote: »
    HeliumIsNoble wrote: »
    Gallowmere1984 wrote: »
    After reading these last few posts, I think I am starting to see the real problem.

    Unless you are 75, physically handicapped, or a literal midget, there is no reason in the world why walking a couple of miles while carrying 20-30 pounds in a duffel should be considered unreasonable. Holy *kitten* people are lazy as *kitten*.
    Those categories cover a lot more people than you might think. There are lot of people who look physically in prime health, but aren't. Case in point being one of my in-laws who has had lifelong back issues, leading up to a slipped disc (possibly two?). She now has metal plates in her spine, along with strict instructions from her surgeon not to put strain on her back! She's a fair bit under 75, too.

    I also wouldn't call 20-30 pounds a weekly shop for a family of four. As it happens, this morning, I cycled to a supermarket that's 2.3 miles from my house, for the sake of its wider stock and lower prices (for some items). This isn't something I do at the drop of a hat, because I can only do this when I'm free and the children are with someone else, or at school.

    I didn't really buy anything like a weekly shop at all, so I would call what I got a "moderate" shop. For me- I'm more tight-fisted about bus fares than most of my friends and family, and so tend to be more willing to carry heavier shopping further.

    In the interests of science, I weighed it when I got back- 12.1kg, or 26lbs. "Pretty light", do I hear you say? Well wait up. This isn't just about weight, it is also about volume. For example, cauliflowers aren't that heavy, but they would take up a lot of room. The stuff I bought filled up two panniers on my bike, and my handbasket on the front.

    As it happens, I have a 65 kilogram capacity (143.3 lb- more than I weigh, and certainly more than today's shop!) rucksack, which I use on a regular enough basis to know that my shopping today would not have fitted into it, if I had gone on foot.

    Sidenote: really, I need at least a 75 kg capacity rucksack, but the 75 kg rucksacks I've tried on are too bulky for me to carry because I'm too short for them. I'm not a midget either.

    This would be why I grocery shop almost daily, personally. It only adds about 30 minutes to the whole affair, and gives me further incentive to get off of my *kitten* and move.

    This is why that study discussed at the beginning of the thread may be more valuable than just looking at distance. For example, as a long-time city resident, I never really did the "do all my shopping on the weekend" since I didn't have a car for years. I would stop on the way home from work a few times a week, since it's basically on the way or not too far out of it. I suspect this is the same for lots of city-dwellers, including those who live in places that would qualify as a food desert. There's also the question of whether they work in a place that is more convenient to stores than where they live.

    Again, I think there are reasons why being poor makes the energy it may take to focus on health and nutrition harder, but this thread was started to discuss the idea that the main problem is "food deserts." IMO, asserting that it is suggests that the problem would be solved if stores in poor neighborhoods were only better/closer and the evidence is that's not so.

    Some people have also jumped in to make comments about the poor being to blame, etc., and that we shouldn't be concerned because it's just will-power, etc., and I want to be clear again that that's not my argument, but I think some of the focus on food deserts is misplaced or unrealistic (we are never going to have mega supermarkets and the ability to buy for cheap in bulk within 2 blocks of where everyone lives -- those kind of supermarkets aren't even near where I live -- which is also why I tried to open the discussion to what existed in, say, the 1950s).
  • ritzvin
    ritzvin Posts: 2,860 Member
    FreyasRebirth wrote: »
    Gallowmere1984 wrote: »
    After reading these last few posts, I think I am starting to see the real problem.

    Unless you are 75, physically handicapped, or a literal midget, there is no reason in the world why walking a couple of miles while carrying 20-30 pounds in a duffel should be considered unreasonable. Holy *kitten* people are lazy as *kitten*.


    Or you're heavily pregnant, have an infant/toddler, or a child who is unwilling to walk. Heck, I wouldn't be shocked if neighbors called CPS on you after one of your older preschoolers had a tantrum over having to walk.

    On the other hand, walking through a poor neighborhood with a full duffel bag (or a store with an empty duffel) looks a bit suspicious. How many people are willing to bring attention to themselves over some lettuce?

    [1] IDK. I think most people in poorer city areas are more apt to mind their own damn business and care more about their own lives than what their neighbors are doing. (Not so many bored housewives/SAHM's with nothing better to do than watch the neighbors). I've never seen a kid have a temper tantrum over walking...when you grow up well aware that this is the only way to get from point A to point B, it is second nature. I think the temper tanrum would be more of an issue with the spoiled suburban kid used to being ferried around by car or who wants to stay home and play video games. (though, in fairness, I should point out that most of the children walking with their parents in my neighborhood are refugees, so the walk up to the store is really, really, really not going to be seen as a hardship).

    [2] No. not really suspicious at all. Bags and carts are common..people need to get stuff from point A to point B. Any local looking at someone carrying a heavy bag would assume work clothes/equipment and/or gym and/or laundry and/or groceries. (The random suburbanite driving through or going to one of the bars/clubs might potentially think they are suspicious - they are so laughably adorable sometimes).

    [on original] I regularly walked long distances (or took buses) hauling heavy books or groceries or laundry as a child, and I am still only 4'10" -- I think the healthy midgets would do just fine. ;P

    (Laundry and getting to/from work or the university are WAY WAY bigger P.I.T.A.'s than the grocery store). Try getting up at still night to take 2 buses and a subway to drop kids at the 1 daycare center you can (almost, but not quite) afford, then taking a few more busses to get to work - and doing this twice a day everyday. Or hauling laundry (at least nowadays there are frequent dollar stores that carry cheap rolling luggage that can be used for this purpose - I would've loved one of those when I was a kid). In comparison, grocery shopping is nothing. I think people really have gotten so much lazier nowadays in this car culture. The older urban generation would have thought nothing of walking to their destination (they didn't know anything else)(neither did I when I was a child). And unfortunately, convenience foods have been around for so long, that an entire generation (or 2) doesn't really know how to cook. Prior generations would have had no problem throwing together a soup with whatever limited root vegetables & meat they could get their hands on in the winter. Hell- there are probably still a few folks around who remember making dandelion soup during the depression.
  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
    edited March 2017
    tomteboda wrote: »
    fascha wrote: »
    8ruvecg5yvjk.png

    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

    Why is the choice only expensive fresh blueberries likely shipped at great expense due to their fragile nature vs. boxed mac & cheese? Seriously? No one EVER says "Oh I have enough money I can buy either blueberries or mac & cheese" . That's absurd. It's more like "The kids complain whenever I cook so I give them mac & cheese because they don't complain".

    Honestly, when you're poor, blueberries are DEFINITELY a luxury item. This has nothing to do with the distance to the grocery store (the definition of "food desert"). You eat a lot of apples, oranges and bananas. There's nothing wrong with apples, oranges and bananas. There's plenty of cheap, easily cooked food. If you can mix up a box of mac & cheese or reheat a frozen dinner in a microwave, you have the means to cook a LOT of things.

    I'm looking at the weekly ad from Aldi's

    69 cents/lb chicken drumsticks
    79 cents/lb fresh green beans
    99 cents / cantaloupe
    $1.99 / 3-lb bag pink lady apples

    Over at Walmart and Walgreens, we have 64 cents/dozen eggs. I can get milk at the local Super-America for $1.99 / gallon (it's $2.38 / gallon at Walmart ).

    This stuff is way cheaper than a processed meal.

    I am solidly middle class and I consider fresh berries to be a luxury item. I buy them as a treat because, as much as I enjoy them, they often cost so much compared to other fruits. When I was growing up, we only had fresh berries when we or someone we knew grew them. Even when they're on sale now, I still feel like I'm splurging when I buy them.
  • JeromeBarry1
    JeromeBarry1 Posts: 10,182 Member
    Most of us think we're middle class, but honestly, most of us are not in the 3rd quintile of incomes in our country. If you expand "middle" to include 2nd and 4th quintiles of income, someone's going to start griping about net wealth, and there's no discernible difference between 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th quintiles of net wealth. All that to intro my thoughts about my cousin living in a village in Uganda, where the ground is fertile the farms are small and the produce is abundant and fresh. They're not fat over there, not the first quintile of income, not the5th.
  • JeromeBarry1
    JeromeBarry1 Posts: 10,182 Member
    edited March 2017
    https://www.facebook.com/bontonfarms/

    Watch the video.
  • Theo166
    Theo166 Posts: 2,564 Member
    Gallowmere1984 wrote: »
    After reading these last few posts, I think I am starting to see the real problem.

    Unless you are 75, physically handicapped, or a literal midget, there is no reason in the world why walking a couple of miles while carrying 20-30 pounds in a duffel should be considered unreasonable. Holy *kitten* people are lazy as *kitten*.

    In this thread on this topic, I see a lot of the soft bigotry of low expectations for what 'poor folk' should be expected capable of doing.
  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
    JeromeBarry1 wrote: »
    Most of us think we're middle class, but honestly, most of us are not in the 3rd quintile of incomes in our country. If you expand "middle" to include 2nd and 4th quintiles of income, someone's going to start griping about net wealth, and there's no discernible difference between 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th quintiles of net wealth. All that to intro my thoughts about my cousin living in a village in Uganda, where the ground is fertile the farms are small and the produce is abundant and fresh. They're not fat over there, not the first quintile of income, not the5th.

    http://money.cnn.com/interactive/economy/middle-class-calculator/

    According to this calculator, I'm not only in the middle class for my county and state, I'm smack dab in the middle of the middle class.

  • southernoregongrape
    southernoregongrape Posts: 117 Member
    Gallowmere1984 wrote: »
    After reading these last few posts, I think I am starting to see the real problem.

    Unless you are 75, physically handicapped, or a literal midget, there is no reason in the world why walking a couple of miles while carrying 20-30 pounds in a duffel should be considered unreasonable. Holy *kitten* people are lazy as *kitten*.

    Thanks that lets me off the hook. I'm 74, on SS and can not walk over 2 blocks without using my rescue inhaler. Luckily, we planned ahead and I can still afford to buy decent foods.

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