It can be much more difficult to access healthy food there than you'd think
10 American Food Deserts Where It Is Impossible To Eat Healthily
http://www.businessinsider.com/food-deserts-urban-2011-10?op=1&IR=T
Over 23 million Americans — including 6.5 million children — live in food deserts: areas without ready access to fresh, healthy, and affordable food. That means there isn't a supermarket within a mile.
These are usually low-income areas, dominated by minorities. In fact, just
8 percent of African Americans live in a census tract with a supermarket.
The effects of food deserts are devastating: they contribute to obesity and other diet-related illnesses, they force families living in these areas to use valuable time traveling to neighboring areas, and they usually lack the resources to improve their situation.
The cure? Seattle is seeing an increase in
"pop-up" grocery stores, while New Orleans has slowly been cultivating an
urban agriculture scene. Other possible initiatives include mobile groceries and
vegetable prescriptions.
Using the
USDA food desert locator, we pinpointed the exact areas affected by this blight.
"...outside downtown Seattle, the citizens of Washington are having a hard time finding a supermarket. The areas lining the Duwamish River are particularly deserted of food access -- citizens of the town of South Park have taken to fishing the polluted river for subsistence. Life expectancy is five years lower here compared to the rest of the county."
"A combination of natural disaster (Hurricane Katrina) and poor government planning and response has really hurt the low-income sections of New Orleans, in particular the Lower Ninth Ward. Since 2005, there have been virtually zero markets in the area, with no place to buy healthy food -- the convenience stores that stayed open have plenty of beer and candy but no produce."
"An estimated half a million Chicago residents -- the vast majority of whom are black -- live in food deserts, including much of the South Side of the city. And the food options that are available are self-defeating: in a typical African-American block, the nearest grocery store is roughly twice the distance as the nearest fast food restaurant. Because of the huge food imbalance in the city, diseases like diabetes and cancer run rampant through the poor communities. It'll take more community gardening initiatives and a curbing of unhealthy fast food joints to reverse this trend."
"In 2006, Minneapolis was almost 50 percent food desert, as was a third of St. Paul. Making matters worse is the fact that one of five Twin City residents don't have cars, making it difficult to get to the areas that do have supermarket and food stores. The Twin Cities area is fighting hard against the food desert issue, which has helped the obesity level of current residents balloon to 25 percent."
"Food deserts in San Francisco include the neighborhoods of Bayview, Visitacion Valley and Hunters Point, where residents finally got their first taste of a grocery store in more than 20 years. Before this, numerous supermarket chains refused to open a location in the historically poor and black neighborhood. Other areas like Oakland and Richmond are still waiting for help."
"Poor Detroit. As if crippling unemployment and a depressing housing market weren't enough, more than 550,000 Detroit residents -- over half the city -- live in food deserts. The result? Detroit has become the world's number one consumer of potato chips. Part of the problem is that fringe retailers -- like gas stations and dollar stores -- are mostly the only ones to accept EBT and food stamps, not "mainstream retailers" like chain supermarkets."
And on and on and on. It really strains credulity to still consider the United States part of the developed world.
