Food Deserts and Inequality in Access to Nutrition.

[SamIam]

Originally Posted by orthodoc

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.

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.