Food Deserts and Inequality in Access to Nutrition.

[glatt]

Originally Posted by SamIam

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.

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.