The Food Desert Crisis in the U.S. Must be Addressed
Written by Sanjana Dugar
Dear Dartmouth,
I’ve written quite a few times now about how food is a foundational vessel for cultural transmission. But what about the role that food plays in politics and economics? As much as the culinary arts remind us of celebration and family, food is inextricable from the power structures that govern and organize our world. Food disparities are the direct result of political efforts, made in the past or perpetuated today, to marginalize certain groups of people. They are the consequence of immense wealth inequality and have inarguable consequences on individuals’ and communities’ health and life expectancy. In the United States, we’ve developed a term for communities whose experience with food and nutrition is characterized by a lack of access to foods that promote basic nutrition and healthfulness: food deserts. What are they, and what brought them about? But more fundamentally, why do food deserts matter?
The concept of food deserts isn’t only thrown around by activists or social justice seekers; it’s a term used by the government in acknowledgement of the serious work this country has to put in in order to rectify what I and many others view as a human rights violation. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) defines an food desert as a region meeting the following criteria:
- A poverty rate of 20% or more;
- In an urban area, at least 500 individuals or 33% of the total population living 1 or more mile from the nearest large grocery store;
- Or, in a rural area, the same number of people living at least 10 miles from the nearest large grocery store.
Put together, the USDA found that these criteria result in regions that largely share the following characteristics: low income and high unemployment levels, a lack of accessible or affordable transportation (which is more of an obstacle in rural areas), and a lack of affordable fresh produce within a reasonable distance. Individuals in certain areas of Chicago, New Orleans, New York City, and Los Angeles amongst many others live in this reality of life-threatening food insecurity, as we’ll see shortly.
Other government offices have conducted research that revealed a spectrum of disturbing truths regarding who has access to healthy and nutritional foods in this country and who does not. The USDA recently found that a shocking 2.3 million individuals live farther than one mile from the nearest large grocery but do not own a car. It was further shown that most of these regions overlap with areas with significant black or brown populations and low-income areas. Studies have found that white neighborhoods have an average of four times as many supermarkets as black neighborhoods. And even within those African American communities, grocery stores are smaller and carry a narrower range of products.
In the absence of accessible and high quality grocery stores, poor residents turn to corner stores that sell a variety of highly-processed foods, typically high in unhealthy fats, sodium, sugar, and cholesterol, at cheap prices. When the choice is between grabbing a tantalizing meal at a low cost versus traversing the city to get to a sad grocery store that may or may not have foods you can afford, it seems to me that the choice is pretty clear.
In order to understand food deserts, it’s important to consider the wealth inequality in this country. The average white family possesses ten times the wealth of the average black family: about $171,000 to $17,150. We’ve already seen that a black or brown community is much more likely to be far from a high-quality grocery store than their white counterparts. That’s because in the past decades, grocery stores have been driven out of urban areas due to oppressive economic pressures that favor high-paying tenants like boutique businesses and renovated residential developments. Some might call this phenomenon gentrification, others renovation, others still upscaling.
Regardless of the political spin you put on the concept, the data reveals a clear and undisputed reality: the fact that food deserts exist at alarmingly high rates in black and brown communities is a direct result of an economic system that is still mired in the economic, social, and political consequences of the oppression of black and brown Americans. A combination of systemic racism that led to redlining districts, a significantly higher rate of loan refusals to people of color as compared to white individuals, higher rates of incarceration, and lower-quality education come together to form a formidable set of circumstances that allow for the existence of food deserts, a denial of the most basic human right to food.
Now that we have considered the “what” and the “how,” let us turn to the “why” – as in, why does it matter if someone doesn’t have access to nutritional and healthful foods? I don’t need to qualify the fact that one’s diet is arguably the most important factor in determining one’s quality of life – as in, freedom from disease and chronic conditions – along with one’s life expectancy. Families with a lack of easy, affordable access to fresh produce and minimally processed meals often turn to fast food out of necessity to provide temporary satiation. The harsh additives, hormones, and chemicals in addition to alarming levels of unhealthy fats, sodium, and sugar in such foods as McDonald’s burgers and Wendy’s Frosties add up: years and years of having access to nothing but these foods – which are hardly even shells of their natural components! – takes a toll on the human body.
A lack of nutrition over long periods of time, beginning often in childhood, means that individuals who live in food deserts have been shown to have higher rates of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Each of these conditions, when clubbed with additional factors like pollution in urban environments and a lack of physical exercise, leads to a high rate of diet-related cancers and even death. One study has even shown that in food deserts, life expectancy is up to 15 years lower than the national average. Other experts believe that solving the food desert issue that persists in impoverished communities is critical to ending the cycle of poverty plaguing certain populations; nutrition and food security, as we know, is vital for young people in school (hence the renewed focus in recent years on subsidized meal programs for children).
In light of what we know about the racial reality of where food deserts exist, the life expectancy discrepancy between whites and blacks in this country makes sense – and so does the increasing wealth gap between them. That is, beyond doubt, a terrifying realization and an unjust reality.
It’s not all bad in the world of food deserts, though, because in recent years, nonprofit groups have been popping up all over the country to collectively attempt to mitigate the existence and effects of food deserts. The Food Empowerment Project, for example, aims “to discourage negligent corporations from pushing unhealthy foods into low-income areas and empower people to make healthier choices by growing their own fruits and vegetables.” Urban centers all over the country have founded community-directed gardens, wherein individuals come together to grow fresh produce and distribute it to their neighbors. In rural regions, Ample Harvest collects excess produce grown by regular households to food pantries. City and state governments have gotten involved as well. New York City, for example, provides tax incentives for city grocery stores through its FRESH Program and provides funds for “Green Carts,” which are street carts that sell fresh produce. Each of these initiatives is easy to get involved with as a volunteer and is working towards a future in which healthy food – the foundation of the right to life – is accessible to everyone. We need to undo the generational damage on health and quality of life that centuries of racial economic oppression have left us with.
I have faith in our country and in our generation – I know that that is the kind of future we can all get behind.
Love always,
Sanjana
Featured Image courtesy of Unsplash
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