Food for Dessert or Food Desert?
The poverty stricken portion of the population tend to live, unsurprisingly, in poor areas, and these areas tend to have little in the way of healthy food options or proper supermarkets. Instead, these areas tend to have an overabundance of fast food and other unhealthy food outlets. The USDA defines food deserts as parts of the country vapid of fresh fruit, vegetables, and other healthful whole foods, usually found in impoverished areas. The USDA places special importance on the availability of supermarkets as they almost always offer a variety of healthy foods.
The lack of healthy food sources that are close to a person’s place of residence or work means that they are forced to eat at fast food stops that often serve exclusively unhealthy options. Such a diet can lead to obesity, diabetes, metabolic disorders, hypertension, and more. It can then be seen how living in a food desert can lead to poor health, therefore leaving the poor at a health disadvantage because of their lack of resources to afford healthy food or live in an area that has access to healthier options. Racial segregation has a part in this because it pushes minorities and the poor into poor areas of cities, thereby subjecting them to live in or create food deserts if that population can not support a supermarket or healthier options. Those in food deserts are even more at a disadvantage if they can not afford a car to drive to a supermarket or an area with better options.
In the Los Angeles area, there is a disparity that is easily seen between the richer areas such as West Hollywood and Silverlake and the impoverished areas such as Inglewood and Compton. This picture shows food deserts in green. Fortunately, the map is not plastered with green, in fact, food deserts are more common in the South than here in California, but that does not mean there is not a great amount of room for improvement.
Supermarkets are of the greatest interest to those hoping the fight this issue of food deserts. As discussed earlier, supermarkets are extremely useful because they offer a wide variety of healthy food options at competitive prices and usually accept EBT among other positive points. Programs hope to aid supermarket expansion in food deserts by offering tax breaks or property incentives. Obama passed the Healthy Food Financing Initiative in 2010 which gave more than $400 million towards the goal of reducing the number of food deserts in America.
Food deserts are only one component of a much larger issue of health insecurity among the poor and minorities of America. That being said, much work is being done to help solve this problem on both a local and national level. It is my hope that by the end of the decade, food deserts will be a small issue and on the verge of extinction.
