Food Deserts and Inequality in Access to Nutrition.

[orthodoc]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

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

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.