Food Deserts and Inequality in Access to Nutrition.

[Undertoad]

The pawn shop is two doors down from a ghetto supermarket. I will have to take pics sometime to show their goods. There are freezers full of racks of ribs, with spices above them, in the same place where the produce section would be found.

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

Also available are snack foods 3-4 weeks past their sell-by date. I made the mistake once of buying a bag. The potato chips were chewy.

[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.

[ZenGum]

Originally Posted by Ibby

Either way, more research is needed in this area.

Ahh, the universal finding, proved in every darn paper there is.

Just once, I'd like to see a study that ends "Yeah we've figured this out, we're done here, let's move on to something else."

Seriously, this stuff is important. Before even long-term health, how can kids do well in school if breakfast was mostly a cupful of sugar and artificial chemicals?

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.

I think you're close but not quite right. It is demand, but I'm not sure the problem is education.
The stores sell this because this is what sells.
If it was profitable to be selling veggies in the ghetto, shops would. People just don't buy them.

Why not? I cannot believe that poor people are completely ignorant of nutrition. Fine details maybe, but a general veggies-good-coke-bad idea must be around, surely? I guess (having spent many years researching US urban ghettoes ) it is more to do with the primacy of immediate survival:
I can get this Burger, fries and coke, now, that will keep me going for another eight hours, within my limited budget; rinse and repeat.
Or maybe just not valuing long-term health over a short term sugar-fat-salt fix.

As for country areas of food deserts, does this account for the fact that many people there have grow-your-own options?

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by ZenGum

Why not? I cannot believe that poor people are completely ignorant of nutrition. Fine details maybe, but a general veggies-good-coke-bad idea must be around, surely? I guess (having spent many years researching US urban ghettoes ) it is more to do with the primacy of immediate survival:
I can get this Burger, fries and coke, now, that will keep me going for another eight hours, within my limited budget; rinse and repeat.
Or maybe just not valuing long-term health over a short term sugar-fat-salt fix.

Some other potential factors.
1) Cooking time. If it's a one-parent household, or both parents work, possibly multiple jobs, it is extremely tempting to have a ready-to-eat meal, whether it's a frozen dinner or fast food.
2) Cost. Processed food is extremely high-energy for low cost. It's unhealthy energy, but it gets you more full for less money than many healthier alternatives.
3) Culture. Even in situations where the previous are not as true anymore as they were, you may have grown up raised by parents for which it was true. Your comfort food is often what you had when you were a kid.