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Economics | Poverty | Food
What is a Food Desert, and How Can We Fix Them?
Fresh fruit and vegetables were my treat growing up
There were times growing up when my family had a rough time finding healthy food.
We were one of those families that seemed to slingshot from being okay financially to scraping the bottom of the barrel for spare change. There were times when I was a little when the only vegetables I saw were the ones my grandmother had growing in the backyard.
It was mostly just tomatoes. Which was fine by me, I freaking love tomatoes.
The kind of food you think of as a treat can be really different depending on what you eat growing up. I crave salad sometimes, crunching on lettuce and spinach and the brine of black olives… things I didn’t get much of when I was small.
Back then, I lived on hot dogs and rice. The occasional chicken soup, a lot of cheap casseroles made out of canned soup and noodles. Ground beef was all we got, and steak was never on the table.
At least those foods were available to us, though. We couldn’t afford them most days, but we could find them when the money came in.
A lot of people aren’t that lucky.
