The Urban Food Desert Myth

I grew up in Los Angeles. We always ate fruits and veggies. It is BS to say that fresh foods are not available in urban areas. Even driving through "the hood" they have the same large chain grocery stores with plenty of healthy options. There are not as many farmer's markets though.

nooshi713 wrote: »

I grew up in Los Angeles. We always ate fruits and veggies. It is BS to say that fresh foods are not available in urban areas. Even driving through "the hood" they have the same large chain grocery stores with plenty of healthy options. There are not as many farmer's markets though.

Not every large city is as fortunate as LA. Cities like Detroit and Atlanta had neighborhoods where crime and poverty had driven out any mainstream grocery stores. Any remaining grocers were small operations that couldn't source fresh produce and meat competitively, so they had poorer quality supplies at higher prices than the suburban neighborhoods.

Things have improved in those cities in recent years, but it's been uneven and is mostly driven by gentrification that has it's own controversies.

urloved33 wrote: »

with the obesity rate being as high as it is in America...I don't think its limited to poor neighborhoods period our obesity problem is not discriminating..we all fat.

Obesity isn't limited to poor neighborhoods or the poor, but it does appear that obesity is more common among people who make less money.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6650a1.htm

I think health & fitness just becomes a lower priority when you're poor, and you are more likely to go with what instant gratification is financially available to you (ie tasty calorie-dense food) when other enjoyments are financially out of reach or you are too tired just trying to get through day-to-day (future health becomes a lower priority that can be dealt with later when you maybe have more time/energy/money). At least for us it seemed to be so.

On food availability: the closest Bodega does indeed really, really suck for groceries (you will be paying an arm and a leg for smaller sizes of shelved goods which doesn't even include vegetables..and I mean travel-type sizes you will have never seen in a real grocery store for double the price. The tiny freezer section is limited to beer, soda, and breaded-fried things), but.. there are full-fledged supermarkets on all 3 of the nearest major North-South bus lines (all of them within 0.5 miles). And definitely within easy cycling distance. (So opting to pay $4 for the tiniest ever shaker bottle of parmesan when my boyfriend failed to tell me he finished the old one off before I started a batch of cooking is on us and not my neighborhood). (FYI- I'm in a rust-belt city whose mass transit system is often mocked).

To answer a previous post about radius criteria...I would probably argue that if you have a grocery store on a single bus line (no transfers between busses required) in less than a 25ish minute ride with a reasonable schedule within 0.5 mile walk, then you are not really in a food desert. You just have different priorities if you don't take that option. (Outer suburban folk with money go through similar enough effort IMO to get food...albeit required by their own choices). So I don't think we really have as much an issue with *urban* food deserts as is often made out..I'm not saying that none exist, but probably nowhere near as many as presumed. We maybe, if anything, have too many ridiculously over-convenient alternatives that we can lazily opt for (bodega or fast food) which skews our choices (options that would not be as super-convenient versus the grocery store to someone with a car/in the suburbs). Come to think of it, I think someone posted an article link somewhere in these forums to some research that found a much stronger link between obesity and fast food density than between obesity and grocery store availability.

But.. being without a car in one of the poorer non-urban areas IS a completely different story. Many of those would qualify as food deserts IMO.