"If you can’t believe this, then you have lived too privileged of a life." I 'don't believe it' because it's false. There are no actual 'food deserts', it's j

"If you can’t believe this, then you have lived too privileged of a life." I 'don't believe it' because it's false. There are no actual 'food deserts', it's just a misleading term that the USDA: "In 2010, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported that 23.5 million Americans live in "food deserts", meaning that they live more than one mile from a supermarket in urban or suburban areas, and more than 10 miles from a supermarket in rural areas" 1 mile in suburban areas? This is not an 'hour on a bus'. In rural areas people must have cars. There is no evidence presented that this is a causal factor in any ability to access fresh food - in actual reality, science suggests quite the opposite. There is definitely no causal evidence that 'The Dollar Store' drives poor nutritional habits. Conversely - there is very clear evidence of at least the economic value of 'The Dollar Store' - and if you closed them, you'd cause an uproar and make poor people's lives even more difficult. Ironically - only a group of completely out of touch 'privileged' people would even consider shutting down dollar stores. If you asked poor people the answer would be 'absolutely not' and they would be materially much worse off. If they really want to do some economic and behavioural science, they can open up fruit & veg markets in these supposed 'deserts' and see what happens. What will happen is that they won't generate enough business to survive, unfortunately. Which would imply there's a host of other factors at play: "Using a structural demand model, we find that exposing low-income households to the same food availability and prices experienced by high-income households would reduce nutritional inequality by only 9%, while the remaining 91% is driven by differences in demand. In turn, these income-related demand differences are partially explained by education, nutrition knowledge, and regional preferences. These findings contrast with discussions of nutritional inequality that emphasize supply-side issues such as food deserts." [1] Healthy food does not generally cost more than unhealthy food [2], the issue of 'Food Deserts' is only marginally relevant and the widespread availability of 'Dollar Stores' is not relevant at all to nutrition. [1] https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/12/political-incorrect-paper-day-food-deserts.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/12/po... [2] https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/3/12/e004277.full?sid=820d6e1a-280e-47a6-b8c5-498bfa4657e3 https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/3/12/e004277.full?sid=820d6e...