food deserts
Yes, you read that right.
Food Deserts: A food desert is a district with little or no access to foods needed to maintain a healthy diet, but often served by plenty of fast food restaurants. (Wikipedia, 2009)
Since “access” is defined in a number of ways, including a lack of knowledge about how to turn ingredients into food, this definition is amazingly broad. To a degree that makes me wonder if food deserts really exist. However, even by eliminating the “can’t cook” definition, areas that lack access to healthy foods reveals two very important things:
1. If you can’t get to a store that sells ingredients, you can’t buy them.
2. Healthy food is more expensive than not-healthy food.
Let’s define our terms a bit here, and talk a bit about my philosophy of eating, before moving forward. We can start with: I am not the food police. I am an obese American woman that writes about food for fun. I am the last person to preach about eschewing junk food. I will not extoll the virtues of crap, however. I have taken careful steps to change my diet so that it is more balanced and better for me. I became a pescatarian because it forced me to restrict my food choices and really think about what I was eating. The fact is that I still have a weakness for carrot cake and ice cream. Eating more healthily does not equate to giving up all junk food, it’s being smarter about how much junk and how often.
Wow. Where’d that soap box come from?
To continue with defining terms -
“Healthy” food is food that has nutritional value and contributes positively to the overall functioning of the body and mind.
“Unhealthy” food is food that has nutritional value but eaten in excess negatively affects the overall functioning of the body and mind.
Until last year, Pittsburgh was a food desert. In 1994, the last downtown grocery store closed. I don’t clearly remember the reasons given for the closing, but having been a regular patron of that grocery store, I know it was always busy. You could pick up a fresh, home-made pepperoni bread roll and a piece of fruit for around $2. It was better for you than hitting one of the three McDonald’s or even going to the George Aiken’s that was across the street. Being in my early 20’s and living alone, I shopped daily, and that supermarket was where I did most of my grocery shopping.
It was also one of two grocery stores accessible by anyone living in the Hill District. The other grocery store was located in North Oakland and closed in the late 90’s, leaving the Hill with no easily accessible grocery stores. This meant that you either paid a jitney to take you to the grocery store on the South Side, took a bus to the grocery store in East Liberty (a significant trip), or you figured something out by buying what was available around the house, which is frequently convenience stores, that stock foods with a long shelf life that is not optimal for good health.
Conversely, let’s take a look at suburban life during the mid-1970’s when my family was not, let’s say, financially well off. There was a supermarket within reasonable driving distance, and we owned a car (it was the suburbs, everyone owned a car). While we were no strangers to the idea of convenience foods, we were required to have a vegetable with lunch and dinner (which made getting fast food takeaway very interesting - my memories of the McDonald’s of my childhood include green beans and broccoli). The people that lived around me had similar experiences. I currently live in the suburbs and we still have the same access to groceries as I did growing up as a suburban child.
The primary difference between these two experiences is economic class. Those who have the least get the least access. This also indicates that the access problem and the cost of food problem are related.
When you are faced with making food choices based on your ability to pay, which more and more people are forced to do now, the choice to buy two heads of broccoli for $2.99 or buy a box of pasta, sauce, and a packet of cookies for $3 is an easy one. One is part of dinner and the other is dinner (and maybe even lunch the next day). The fact is that the rest of your shopping cart will be filled with cheaper, less nutritious items. You go directly from “non-nutritious food sometimes” to “non-nutritious food all of the time” in rather short order. This is when you end up with a malnourished, obese population that is trapped where they don’t feel like they can get out and in many cases, can’t afford to get out of their situation.
What can we do to fix this situation? The fact is that it’s difficult to change the culture overnight, and food and culture are completely intertwined. Grandma’s meatloaf recipe gets lost after two generations that used the needed 2lbs of ground beef to make dinner for a week, rather than dinner for a night. The food you eat every day becomes what is comfortable for you and you don’t want new and different things. You can’t throw someone forceably out of their comfort zone when it comes to food.
There are people out there that are already fighting for better food in school lunch programs, which affects the kids that get subsidized breakfasts and lunches. There are cooks that are focusing on food that is healthy and how to stretch the dinner dollar without resorting to Hamburger Helper or ramen. Farmer’s Markets are cropping up in urban areas, which at least for part of the year, provides access to fresh food in places where there may not be otherwise.
The fact is that this is a slow process. It’s education, and lobbying local government, and being active in our own communities. It’s fixing a broken system, which takes a while.
But, the journey of a thousand miles starts with one step. Now that you know that this exists, I encourage you to take that first step towards being part of the solution.
For further reading:
“Food Deserts: A guest post” by Susanne Freidberg
Tags: philosophy