Food Deserts and Inequality in Access to Nutrition.
 

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(Maps courtesy of USDA.)

Why America has a nutrition/obesity problem, especially among the poor and among communities of color. this stuff is important!

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i note that the first map especially is really closely correlated with the election results...

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Wow, those are some insanely highly detailed maps, without a lot of concrete reference points to correlate. Do you have photographic memory of spacial orientation details, or did you overlay semi-transparent layers of the maps in a graphics editing program?

How did you determine the correlations between the maps? Even that they were "really closely correlated" --by what percentage would you estimate?

The pawn shop is two doors down from a ghetto supermarket. I will have to take pics sometime to show their goods. There are freezers full of racks of ribs, with spices above them, in the same place where the produce section would be found.

This is an education problem. The ribs are not utterly cheap, but this is the food they demand, and are provided.

Also available are snack foods 3-4 weeks past their sell-by date. I made the mistake once of buying a bag. The potato chips were chewy.

hence the demand for leaded paint chips which retain their crunch. Please follow along, Mr. Tode.

It's more that I'm familiar with the elections map - note the rings of white flight republicans surrounding southern democratic cities - along with remembering an article I can't find about how the blue curve that runs along the fertile strip of the south - from Mississippi (rich Delta soil) across Alabama and Georgia up into the Carolinas - makes millions-of-years-old dead plankton relevant in American politics (by making that stretch of formerly-submerged land particularly fertile, meaning they became predominantly black in the age of slavery and retain large african-american populations today), and I notice the same trend of predominantly african-american areas having more food deserts than whiter areas.
edit to add: so obviously I'm speaking in a political science mindset, not mathematical correlation. Just "eyeballing" it as it were.

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you can seriously pick out the poor parts of cities - and the least white parts of them - going off just these maps alone. 'Course, in the west, a lot of that food desert is also actual desert.

but there's some important stuff going on in the west, too, if you look for it.

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reservations are MUCH more likely to be food deserts than other land.

Education, and cultural expectations, are definitely part of the issue. When I worked in Moosonee (sub-arctic, south end of James Bay) in the 1980s, the train brought in groceries once a week for the local grocery store. The next day, every frozen dinner, all the frozen fish, wings, and fried whatever would have been stripped from the store; all the baked goods would be gone; the produce was always untouched. (People there weren't living on the land, with a few exceptions, and weren't adhering to an Inuit diet or anything similar.)

That said, I'm all for local sourcing - fresh, local food through coops, farmer's markets, etc. The more direct farm-to-table, the better.

Walking, or the refusal to do it, is another cultural thing. Americans don't generally like to walk. American cities and neighborhoods aren't laid out to encourage walking (to walk to my local grocery is to take your life in your hands). If it isn't dangerous, though, 1/2 to 1 mile is NOT a long distance. My ex-mother in law walked a mile each way to her local grocery well into her eighties. She pulled a little wire grocery cart and bought what she needed that day. She came from a European tradition of daily marketing and never kept food in her fridge more than a day. I have relatives who walk five miles or more daily, in their seventies. When they go sightseeing (in Canada), people think they're nuts to walk 2 miles to see a local attraction.

It will take major public health programs to address behaviors like these - encouraging people to choose walking, to choose local, healthy foods to eat, and so on. I think the funding needs to be provided; otherwise we're facing a public health disaster over the next ten to fifteen years. But it'll take time, because people have to internalize new attitudes and choices.

Ahh, the universal finding, proved in every darn paper there is. ;)

Just once, I'd like to see a study that ends "Yeah we've figured this out, we're done here, let's move on to something else."

Seriously, this stuff is important. Before even long-term health, how can kids do well in school if breakfast was mostly a cupful of sugar and artificial chemicals?

I think you're close but not quite right. It is demand, but I'm not sure the problem is education.
The stores sell this because this is what sells.
If it was profitable to be selling veggies in the ghetto, shops would. People just don't buy them.

Why not? I cannot believe that poor people are completely ignorant of nutrition. Fine details maybe, but a general veggies-good-coke-bad idea must be around, surely? I guess (having spent many years researching US urban ghettoes ;) ) it is more to do with the primacy of immediate survival:
I can get this Burger, fries and coke, now, that will keep me going for another eight hours, within my limited budget; rinse and repeat.
Or maybe just not valuing long-term health over a short term sugar-fat-salt fix.

As for country areas of food deserts, does this account for the fact that many people there have grow-your-own options?

Some other potential factors.
1) Cooking time. If it's a one-parent household, or both parents work, possibly multiple jobs, it is extremely tempting to have a ready-to-eat meal, whether it's a frozen dinner or fast food.
2) Cost. Processed food is extremely high-energy for low cost. It's unhealthy energy, but it gets you more full for less money than many healthier alternatives.
3) Culture. Even in situations where the previous are not as true anymore as they were, you may have grown up raised by parents for which it was true. Your comfort food is often what you had when you were a kid.

You'd be surprised. Stunned, even. I end up in a lot of conversations in the store checkout line, because my groceries are so unusual (20 pounds of zucchini every week, for example.) One woman, on seeing my bag of fresh green beans, asked me, "You know, I've always wondered... Do you, like, keep the cans at home to put them in, or what?" She honestly didn't even know you could eat a green bean without giving it a proper aluminum soak first. Another, while nominally approving of my selection, asked if I knew about this great new Vitamin Water thing. "I just let it take care of all that for me."

Picture the people who come into UT's pawn shop every day. It's like them, only more widespread.

Mmmmyeaahhh ... maybe I am kind of insulated ...


[thinks about some of the morons I knew who had gotten into university. Hmmm.]

So which maps are you eyeballing? The food desert maps I see here look like random splotches, whereas the last map (I assume the election map) has the type of clear features you are describing.

For instance, which food maps show the "rings of white flight republicans surrounding southern democratic cities" or the "predominantly african-american areas"? I'm having trouble seeing this. By looking at the zoomed-in cities, it appears that the food deserts are in rural, or outlying areas. I can understand that, because where I live it takes 30 minutes to drive to a grocery store.

Here's what I'm seeing, flint. This is admittedly just a quick look, not a rigorous mathematical analysis, so you might not see the same trends I do - but to me the blue shades look to be a lot more desert-y.

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Since when did Appalachia have a good diet? I thought Tennessee and Kentucky would just be one big food desert...

Or maybe I shouldn't buy into that stereotype as much?

Took the words out of my mouth. I agree with you and UT. The problem is as much about upbringing and education as it is about accessibility.

That said, it's one thing to take a mile or two stroll either alone or with another adult when you don't need to carry anything either coming or going. The image that comes to my mind is a single mom trying to cross a busy inner city street with a couple of toddlers and a baby in a stroller. Even if the Mom is a fitness freak who runs 5 miles a day, she might feel daunted by the logistics of making it to a store even a half mile away and then returning home with the additional burden of several bags of groceries. Even someone who could use the city bus for such a trip might feel overwhelmed and justifiably so.

Sure, this hypothetical Mom could repeat the expedition every day, so she wouldn’t have to carry as many things, but is it realistic to expect her to do so? In addition, those little grocery cart thingies cost money. Even an expenditure of $20.00 extra may break a budget which can’t even cover the cost of pampers by the last few days of the month.

In rural America, the distances involved can prove insurmountable for anyone from 8 to 80 without a car. Even if you have a cute little cart and are spunky and fit, it would take the better part of your day to walk 10 miles to the grocery store and 10 miles back. And that’s if you leave the kids alone at home to amuse themselves by setting fire to the water coming out of the tap in the kitchen sink. ;)

Eating the foods produced locally may or may not be a viable alternative. It helps to have a farmer’s market somewhere nearby. If you live in a small town in rural America, the farmer’s market can be 30 or more miles away over in the county seat. In addition, if you actually have a way to get over to the bright lights of Bumfuck City, the farmer’s market probably doesn’t take food stamps. Curses, foiled again.

But that’s OK. You are going to grow your own garden to put some decent food on the family table. You also just so happen to have housing that includes a yard big enough for a vegetable garden, the landlord doesn’t care if you tear up the lawn out back to plant some veggies, and you live in a region where the cost of the extra water does not factor into the equation. Good for you, but many low income families in rural areas are not as fortunate. Try growing a garden out West with no access to irrigation, for example. You couldn’t even put in a crop of pinto beans and forget the tomatoes.

Nothing is ever simple.

Nicely put Sam.

I especially liked this line:

You know, you really are a fucking good writer.

I walk along inner city streets every single day and they are the easiest streets to walk along. You have wide sidewalks and intersections with crosswalks and signals. The traffic is so heavy that the cars never get above about 20 mph. Pedestrians pretty much rule in the city.

It gets a little worse in the suburbs, because you don't have as many signals and you don't have sidewalks on many streets. Traffic goes around 40 mph, so your time to cross the street is shorter before going splat.

Rural areas are the worst. There is never a sidewalk, and often just a ditch at the side of the road. The distances are huge, and even though traffic is light, the cars are going 50 mph or greater.

The problem with grocery shopping in the city is that there are no real grocery stores in the city. Just little corner stores.

edit: I average about 6-7 miles a day of walking just going through my daily routine.

I know all about dragging four small children along on grocery shopping trips. Navigating a huge parking lot with a bunch of preschoolers and a baby was terrifying. I know there are all sorts of situations. It's the general principles I'm talking about.

My point re my m-i-l was that her trips took real effort, they weren't a mere stroll. At 84, navigating the hills on the way to the store wasn't easy, nor was pulling the cart. She lived on far less than poverty level income so the cost of the cart was significant to her, but she made it a priority. She didn't have Pampers to buy but also didn't have WIC or other programs.

I think the maps offer some food for thought, but a much closer look is needed. And while some single moms may find it impossible to get to the store (although how do they get anywhere, then? Do they never leave the apartment?), part of public health planning is to get programs going that bring the 'store' right into the neighborhood, whether as farmer's markets or coops or community gardens. Living in urban areas is actually more friendly to walking, as glatt says. I know an urban planner in Denver who is frustrated beyond reason with the typical suburban planning layout, who wants to plan small urban-style neighborhoods where you can walk to all the important stores and services. Anyway ... plenty of food for thought and planning.

All the strategies people can employ to alleviate their health inequality/state of mind in the face of grinding poverty are fine for a few days, or weeks, or months. The 2 mile walk to the supermarket with kids and shopping, the homegrown bits and bobs, the daily shopping of marked down veg and meats etc etc.

But every day in poverty, 365 days a year, every year, with no real sense of anything being truly changeable saps the will.

I've never really been there. My gripes have been more about working with people who earn two or three times my salary and comparing my life to theirs. "We're a team sounds hollow when your big treat every month is buying a cold bottle of Diet Coke and theirs is going to The Ivy. It's certainly not their fault, but if it hurt me when I was working full time I can see how it chafes people who find themselves unable to.

I've been in the same general area though. And it has to be part of your life. I remember resenting a documentary about women on benefits - or something like that - because she had branded condiments. Hang on! I want HP Sauce too! I buy my eggs singly and my fresh food every day because I can't afford any waste!

But you cut your cloth. You have to. And it takes planning, and time and commitment to live healthily on a low income when you are responsible for every penny.

Lucky here now. Never go without toilet paper or washing up liquid or washing powder in order to eat. I feel genuine pity for those without a safety net. No matter how bad things felt, I always had one.

Are there beer or tobacco deserts I wonder?

But what has really surprised me most about this thread is that no-one has asked what Clodfobble does with 20 pounds of zucchini each week.

Sorry, Rhi.
You've only been here five years. There are still some initiation tests you need to pass...

Apart from Muslim countries, in the US we have Dry Counties.

Here's a map:
Red=Dry
Yellow=Mixed
Blue=Wet

It's been a long time since I've visited the Arlington/DC area. I used to get over there a couple of times a year because my ex-husband grew up in Arlington and still had family there. Sounds like things are still about the way I remember them. Back when I made my first visits to the DC area, I was really impressed by the Metro which was only recently completed back then.. I loved to walk down the mile or so from my ex's family home to the nearest metro station and ride under the Potomac and into DC, so we could stroll around and visit the Smithsonian and all the rest.

But isn’t “inner city” DC kind of an exception to the inner city of parts of NYC and other major metro areas? I don’t know because DC is the only inner city area I have experience with other than Denver and there’s no comparison.

I spent far too much of my life in Colorado Springs (metro area pop 500,000), and THAT city is awful. The bus system is bad, speed limits can be as high as 50mph on streets that go through major business areas and many times there are no sidewalks.

As Dana might say, you're spot on about the woes of being a pedestrian in a rural area





Must have been a major pain in the ass, doc, and you had a car. Moms should all be given medals for just not going insane. I’m in complete agreement about the principle.

I guess I was a little snippy about the cart. I had a bit of resentment over those little carts because there was a time in my life when I had to walk a mile or so to the grocery store and could barely afford the rent, never mind any extras. Sometimes I would “borrow” one of those smaller carts the stores now have and wheel home my groceries in it. I’d return it on my next trip. Your MIL was an exceptional lady, but I have to respectfully differ with you as to whether she is a good analogy to an urban Mom with 3 or 4 little kids.

Thank dog, those are few and far between! :joint: People of all income brackets and ages do love their vices. Those corner stores carry smokes and any town with a population of more than 500 always has a liquor store which also carries cigarettes.

Me too. I assume she juices them?

@ Dana: You’re so sweet. TY! :blush:

It varies so much state to state. You can't buy cigs at liquor stores in NY, You can't even buy mixers; only wine and liquor. Grocery stores can sell beer. In VT, just across the road, you can buy beer, wine, liquor, cigs, mixers, lottery tickets, candy etc at the state liquor stores, Beer and wine at grocery stores.

Technically true, but they have to ring you up twice/give you two receipts: one from the Vermont Liquor Outlet with ONLY your liquors over 20% and one from the private store with everything else. The one in Winooski has two separate checkouts/registers; the one on Pearl st. here in Burlington just does it all on one register, I think, which separates out the tickets.

The liquor store itself, therefore, can only sell liquors, but is, afaik, always attached to a store that sells the rest.

Now in England, many stores sell everything.
Lottery, booze, fags etc. In fact you can buy drink from 08.00 (as I know to my detriment). Supermarkets and indepent shops.

And yes, some of the corner stores are Muslim owned, but why should they care how kafir kill themselves?
If'n they don't indulge themselves anyway.
Not being snide - I've known plenty of Christians break the Ten Commandments.

As far as I am aware there are still some places in Wales and Scotland that are "dry" on Sundays. Even that may be inaccurate - it is certainly against the norm. I just remember it from camping trips in my childhood.

True. It's been about 20 years since I lived in Burlington, but in Bennington at the liquor store sort of across from Family Footwear on 7 I don't remember ever getting two receipts, but I also usually only get one type of hooch at a time so that might be why. Or maybe they have a way of ringing them as different categories?

This calls for a road trip to investigate!

I'm pretty sure when I would send seniors out to pick up both beer and liquor at the BBO they'd bring me back two receipts.

Did power corrupt you? :D

oh, no, it wasn't a matter of ordering them. More like bribing them with a share. It was usually customary to let them keep a couple of beers, or get them drunk once or twice if they pick up a bunch of liquor.

But you kept receipts?

oh, yeah, they had to bring them back so i'd know they aren't bullshitting me about how much shit cost. you gotta be careful when youre on a college budget. You gotta know JUST how much your booze costs you.

True. heheheheeee. That's why we drank Old Milwaukee Light (Old Mud Light) because it was slightly under 5 bucks a 12 pack. This was in the 80s, of course.

Sinbad did a thing about 'college poor.' When you were happy to have money for the pop machine times (ours was 35cents and sometimes I still couldn't cut it.)
He said you'd find a dollar and be all struttin' and proud..."I'm gonna just hang out with my dollar."

Bennington is all about the PBR, buncha hipster fucks.
http://www.emotionreply.com/g/11/16.gif

I have a couple friends (admitted 'billies) who LOVE PBR. Won't drink anything else. I have set of younger friends who drink 'Natty Light' (Natural Light.)

My nephew brought home a PBR rocking chair from college, so I guess it is all the rage!

Minifob eats them, all by his lonesome. I peel them first, which removes more weight than you might guess. Then I chop/cook/puree them (not juicing, real pureeing in the blender,) and he drinks them in veggie smoothies all day long. It takes a lot of veggies to equal the same number of calories in a serving of traditional carbs.

I used to buy that much about twice as often, until we figured out Minifobette is allergic to all forms of squash. So she eats a lot more carrots and onions now, to make up for it.

Every states does seem to have its own set of laws most of which make no sense. In Colorado the grocery and convenience stores are allowed to sell only 3.2 beer and wine coolers. Liquor stores, in addition to selling every kind of alcoholic product known to man, also sell mixers, FRESH lemons and limes, and smokes. No duplicate receipts required. Cigarettes can be purchased just about anywhere.

Marijuana can be bought legally only at a medical marijuana dispensary and you have to have a special card issued by the state. I'm interested to see what will happen once marijuana for the masses becomes legal after the first of the year.

At least OUR low income people have ready access to fresh sources of vitamin C, so there's no excuse for any outbreaks of scurvy in Colorado. :D

Are the liquor stores there state-owned/state-run or just licensed private businesses?

I don't know about you, kid. Sending seniors out into Vermont snow storms to buy you booze? Any idea how hard it is to use a walker in 3 foot snow drifts? Never mind how difficult it is for someone with early onset Alzheimer's to keep all those receipts straight. :eyebrow: :crone:

Colorado has licensed private businesses. However, down here in the Lost Corners, it gets tricky. My town is right next to the Ute tribal reservation as well as the Navajo Nation. It is illegal to even carry a bootle of booze for yourself, never mind sell any in either the Navajo Nation or on Ute tribal lands. They are located in an alcohol desert as well as a literall one.

Most Navajo's seem to have access to a pick-up truck of some variety. They solve the problem by driving over to New Mexico where you can find a gas station which also serves as a drive-thru liquor store at just about every cross road. They're open on Sundays, too which wasn't the case in Colorado until recently. Everytime I'm down that way and have to buy gas, I feel amazed all over again that I am walking into a liquor store to pay for my gas.

Needless to say, the death toll due to drunk driving is astronomical on both the rez and New Mexico highways. Folks here about warn newcomers to never drive on roads that go thru tribal lands on the weekends.

Go figure.

Perky Coloradans from around here also have the option of a casual walk across the state line over to Utah - I prefer the 70 mile round trip to the town of Monticello, myself, but the show-offs put in the extra 25 miles each way to purchase their poison in Moab. Utah offers the discerning booze shopper tiny state owned stores staffed by disapproving Mormons. People in cars run the risk of missing Utah liquor stores altogether, since they are plain with teensy signs, relegated to side streets and only open from about 2 - 7pm weekdays.

I think it's best to consider #1 that most of the map is actually purple, and #2 that highly complex patterns like this are going to be very susceptible to confirmation bias. These maps look much too detailed to support a definitive conclusion, without overlaying them directly.

I'll throw in that a lot of remote Aboriginal communities have this problem very severely*. How much do you think it costs to truck refrigerated vegetables 1,500 kms to a community of maybe 500 people, most of whom are scraping by on some kind of government support?

This is just one of the many interconnected problems.


* For "very severely" I almost wrote "in spades". [hangs head in shame for even thinking it].

I disagree. At the county level, every county is either (possibly light) red or (possibly light) blue, it only looks purple from a distance because of the way your brain blends the shades. In relation to my point about the south, the bluer an area is - even if its still reddish-purple across multiple counties or precincts or whatever - the less white it is, on average. It also looks more likely, on average, to be in a food desert, especially controlling for how densely populated the small inner-city deserts are, on the map, to me. I already know it to be a fact that communities of color are more affected by food deserts, and therefore pointing out that I think the map visually shows that is valid, even if you disagree if you can actually see the pattern visually.

Which is why the vast amount of other data showing that things like this overwhelmingly affect communities of color, and that the effect of it is extremely broad but subtle, correlating well to the known correlation between southern vote distribution and race, works up to a fairly solid and statistically testable hypothesis. And, in fact, I'm absolutely certain that i could write a literal essay on it for a stats class if i took one. As it is, I'm simply too lazy to add up all the land area counted as food deserts that effect predominantly PoC vs area that effects PoC, controlling for population density, and keeping in mind the overall population of PoC in America... etc etc

the maps alone, no. The overwhelming data from multiple fields and sources that say this is an issue among communities of color, however, can be visually reenforced by the fact that another pattern that highlights regions predominantly of color is the voting distribution in the south, and both can be mapped to show visual patterns, for the spacially-oriented.

Look, your position isn't convincingly supported by the evidence at hand. I'm not arguing the veracity of your position, or how many other factors weigh in to how you formed it. You made a statement specifically about a conclusion that can be reached from these maps, but it can't be reached from these maps. You were reaching, and you over-reached. I tried to inquire politely, but your answers became progressivley more vague. I'm not 'out to get you' on this, I'm just interested in a solid, well-founded defense of a claim which I wasn't personally able to confirm based on the evidence you presented. Now, you're saying it is supported by all this other stuff. That's fine, just don't say it's based on these maps unless you intend to back that claim. Either back it or retract it--these would be the two intellectually honest options you have.

The 'force' of an opinion, alone, is not a good indicator of accuracy. If it was indicated by the evidence, it wouldn't require you to force it.
This is the definition of confirmation bias. You'e projected a conclusion upon the evidence. This is backwards to how science works.

I didn't say the conclusion can be reached from the maps. I said

because I think the maps do visually show the correlation, in the context of a wider political context. I didn't say the maps alone prove the correlation, I merely noted the correlation.
It's not my job to be google for you and show you all the articles, studies, and such that I've read over the past few years that argue my point, dude. I was just pointing out that the correlation exists and bears thinking about, and defended that thesis with the information I have easily at hand. You wanna know more, look it up!

You can't back-pedal, obfuscate, and redirect your way out of this. Your position was that the maps show it.