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Food Deserts in America

31 points by pmoriarty 4y ago

missedthecue 4y ago
"[I]n urban areas, the U.S Department of Agriculture considers a food desert an area with no ready access to a store with fresh and nutritious food options within one mile" TIL I live in a 'food desert'. I guess this is only a problem if you don't have access to a car or bus.
- pmoriarty 4y ago
  "I guess this is only a problem if you don't have access to a car or bus." Most people in the US live in urban areas, and most urban areas in the US have awful public transportation. Even when they have some means of getting to richer areas, the poor (who are most likely to live in food deserts) rarely if ever go shopping in rich areas, where the most nutritious food tends to be. They tend to shop where they live.
- troon-lover 4y ago
MontyCarloHall 4y ago
Food deserts are a tough problem to solve, because they’re often definitively caused by lack of demand, making supply unprofitable and impractical. For example [0]: > Between 2004 and 2016, more than a thousand supermarkets opened nationwide in neighborhoods around the country that had previously been food deserts. We studied the grocery purchases of about 10,000 households in those neighborhoods. While it’s true that these households buy less healthy groceries than people in wealthier neighborhoods, they do not start buying healthier groceries after a new supermarket opened. Instead, we find that people shop at the new supermarket, but they buy the same kinds of groceries they had been buying before. > The food desert story is that the lack of supply of healthy foods in food deserts causes lower demand for healthy foods. But the modern economy is more sophisticated than this explanation allows for—grocers have become amazingly good at selling us exactly the kinds of foods we want to buy. As a result, our data support the opposite story: lower demand for healthy food is what causes the lack of supply. [0] https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2019/december/what-really-happens-when-a-grocery-store-opens-in-a--food-desert.html https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2019/decemb...
- majormajor 4y ago
  I would imagine time is a bigger factor than supply: healthier foods often take longer to prep; to put it the other way, the faster the meal, often the worse the health.
  - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
    And, of course, the closer to the edge you are economically, the more you have worse problems than taking the time to cook something healthy.
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      Yes, it does take a few minutes to cook a steak in the microwave you can buy at the thrift store for $10. About 3 minutes to fry a couple eggs. I throw fresh veggies into the blender, grind them up, and drink them. I'm a very lazy man, and spend very little time preparing healthy meals.
  - prawn 4y ago
    Maybe people should be encouraged to lean on frozen vegetables - they're already prepared (trimmed and chopped), no spoilage because you didn't get around to using them in time, can have them at hand like anything shelf stable, then incorporating them into something like a stirfry is almost instant. A very quick combo I make fairly often is rice in the rice cooker with dumplings (out of the freezer) steamed on top. Sprinkle with various sauces, deep fried shallots, etc and done. Then refrigerate the extra rice and use it to make fried rice the next day with frozen vegetables, etc. The rice cooker is hands-off. The fried rice is quick and leaves leftovers. I incorporate fresh ingredients from my garden but it's easy to make something decent without those.
    - triyambakam 4y ago
      I really appreciate frozen broccoli for this reason and it's nice to put it on top of masoor dal while it cooks.
    - 4y ago
vavooom 4y ago
I have personally been impressed with the increased offerings at my local 7/11 (milk, eggs, decent produce i.e. bananas). While not a perfect selection, it certainly serves as a walkable stop-gap of healthy offerings. Would be interesting to see such options increase in availability in communities such as these.
armchairhacker 4y ago
One of the issues with poverty and obesity is that a lot of people seem to think and argue poor people can’t afford healthy food. While there are some poor groups who cannot get any frozen vegetables or unprocessed of any sort without going into debt or becoming homeless or just not having access, I think they are the minority. Frozen vegetables, canned beans and meat, eggs, etc. are very healthy, very cheap, and ubiquitous even in mini-marts. Almost everyone can eat healthy if they really prioritize it. The main issue is that when you’re poor, you don’t prioritize healthy foods. You have stress and much bigger things to worry about, you’re more concerned with having food than having quality food. While its possible to buy healthy, it requires finding a way to get to the grocery store and save a few dollars somewhere else. And then, the payoff is that maybe it will make you healthier, but maybe not even, because the additional stress and undiagnosed health issues may cancel it out. To top it off, the foods I mentioned - canned and frozen vegetables - are boring and not particularly tasty. If you want to make healthy food which “tastes good”, you need to spend significantly more time money: you need to go to fancier stores, pay more, actually cook the food, and make sure it doesn’t go bad. So just giving poor people theoretical access to healthy food isn’t enough. You need to encourage healthy food with discounts, make it more accessible, teach people what is healthy, and why eating healthy food is important. And on top of that, eating healthy needs to actually be important vs. the other priorities people are dealing with.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- iratewizard 4y ago
  I hear lines of thinking like this about poor people where it's never really their fault and it's just an unfortunate circumstance. It has always struck me as weird, because I grew up poor and grew up around poor people. I've never come across any of these poor people you describe anywhere besides television.
  - colpabar 4y ago
    A lot of people who have never been poor refuse to acknowledge that a lot of poor people are poor in large part because they make bad choices. I think it makes them feel better.
possiblydrunk 4y ago
Lol! First thought was ice cream and apple pie. "s" vs "ss", sigh ...
mtoddsmith 4y ago
In every one of these discussions about nutrition, food costs and availability, should be a link to a site with a step by step guide on how to buy and prepare healthy tasty food on a budget. Does such a site exist?
Markoff 4y ago
for anyone who misread the headline like me https://www.eatthis.com/iconic-desserts-united-states/ https://www.eatthis.com/iconic-desserts-united-states/

31 points by pmoriarty 4y ago

"[I]n urban areas, the U.S Department of Agriculture considers a food desert an area with no ready access to a store with fresh and nutritious food options within one mile" TIL I live in a 'food desert'. I guess this is only a problem if you don't have access to a car or bus.

pmoriarty 4y ago
"I guess this is only a problem if you don't have access to a car or bus." Most people in the US live in urban areas, and most urban areas in the US have awful public transportation. Even when they have some means of getting to richer areas, the poor (who are most likely to live in food deserts) rarely if ever go shopping in rich areas, where the most nutritious food tends to be. They tend to shop where they live.
troon-lover 4y ago

MontyCarloHall 4y ago

Food deserts are a tough problem to solve, because they’re often definitively caused by lack of demand, making supply unprofitable and impractical. For example [0]: > Between 2004 and 2016, more than a thousand supermarkets opened nationwide in neighborhoods around the country that had previously been food deserts. We studied the grocery purchases of about 10,000 households in those neighborhoods. While it’s true that these households buy less healthy groceries than people in wealthier neighborhoods, they do not start buying healthier groceries after a new supermarket opened. Instead, we find that people shop at the new supermarket, but they buy the same kinds of groceries they had been buying before. > The food desert story is that the lack of supply of healthy foods in food deserts causes lower demand for healthy foods. But the modern economy is more sophisticated than this explanation allows for—grocers have become amazingly good at selling us exactly the kinds of foods we want to buy. As a result, our data support the opposite story: lower demand for healthy food is what causes the lack of supply. [0] https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2019/december/what-really-happens-when-a-grocery-store-opens-in-a--food-desert.html https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2019/decemb...

majormajor 4y ago
I would imagine time is a bigger factor than supply: healthier foods often take longer to prep; to put it the other way, the faster the meal, often the worse the health.
- AnimalMuppet 4y ago
  And, of course, the closer to the edge you are economically, the more you have worse problems than taking the time to cook something healthy.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    Yes, it does take a few minutes to cook a steak in the microwave you can buy at the thrift store for $10. About 3 minutes to fry a couple eggs. I throw fresh veggies into the blender, grind them up, and drink them. I'm a very lazy man, and spend very little time preparing healthy meals.
- prawn 4y ago
  Maybe people should be encouraged to lean on frozen vegetables - they're already prepared (trimmed and chopped), no spoilage because you didn't get around to using them in time, can have them at hand like anything shelf stable, then incorporating them into something like a stirfry is almost instant. A very quick combo I make fairly often is rice in the rice cooker with dumplings (out of the freezer) steamed on top. Sprinkle with various sauces, deep fried shallots, etc and done. Then refrigerate the extra rice and use it to make fried rice the next day with frozen vegetables, etc. The rice cooker is hands-off. The fried rice is quick and leaves leftovers. I incorporate fresh ingredients from my garden but it's easy to make something decent without those.
  - triyambakam 4y ago
    I really appreciate frozen broccoli for this reason and it's nice to put it on top of masoor dal while it cooks.
  - 4y ago

vavooom 4y ago

I have personally been impressed with the increased offerings at my local 7/11 (milk, eggs, decent produce i.e. bananas). While not a perfect selection, it certainly serves as a walkable stop-gap of healthy offerings. Would be interesting to see such options increase in availability in communities such as these.

armchairhacker 4y ago

One of the issues with poverty and obesity is that a lot of people seem to think and argue poor people can’t afford healthy food. While there are some poor groups who cannot get any frozen vegetables or unprocessed of any sort without going into debt or becoming homeless or just not having access, I think they are the minority. Frozen vegetables, canned beans and meat, eggs, etc. are very healthy, very cheap, and ubiquitous even in mini-marts. Almost everyone can eat healthy if they really prioritize it. The main issue is that when you’re poor, you don’t prioritize healthy foods. You have stress and much bigger things to worry about, you’re more concerned with having food than having quality food. While its possible to buy healthy, it requires finding a way to get to the grocery store and save a few dollars somewhere else. And then, the payoff is that maybe it will make you healthier, but maybe not even, because the additional stress and undiagnosed health issues may cancel it out. To top it off, the foods I mentioned - canned and frozen vegetables - are boring and not particularly tasty. If you want to make healthy food which “tastes good”, you need to spend significantly more time money: you need to go to fancier stores, pay more, actually cook the food, and make sure it doesn’t go bad. So just giving poor people theoretical access to healthy food isn’t enough. You need to encourage healthy food with discounts, make it more accessible, teach people what is healthy, and why eating healthy food is important. And on top of that, eating healthy needs to actually be important vs. the other priorities people are dealing with.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
iratewizard 4y ago
I hear lines of thinking like this about poor people where it's never really their fault and it's just an unfortunate circumstance. It has always struck me as weird, because I grew up poor and grew up around poor people. I've never come across any of these poor people you describe anywhere besides television.
- colpabar 4y ago
  A lot of people who have never been poor refuse to acknowledge that a lot of poor people are poor in large part because they make bad choices. I think it makes them feel better.

possiblydrunk 4y ago

Lol! First thought was ice cream and apple pie. "s" vs "ss", sigh ...

mtoddsmith 4y ago

In every one of these discussions about nutrition, food costs and availability, should be a link to a site with a step by step guide on how to buy and prepare healthy tasty food on a budget. Does such a site exist?

Markoff 4y ago

for anyone who misread the headline like me https://www.eatthis.com/iconic-desserts-united-states/ https://www.eatthis.com/iconic-desserts-united-states/