People Who Live in Food Deserts in America

1455 Words3 Pages

America is by far one of the wealthiest and most powerful nations worldwide. But to be such a powerhouse and beacon of some much opportunity, The United States is struggling to provide families with the sufficient amount of food. The parts of the country that lack adequate food supply are known as food deserts. The term food desert can be used when describing areas with limited resources and little to no access to fresh fruits, vegetables, meats and dairy products. Affordable and nutritious food is almost impossible to gain access to in food deserts. Approximately 2.3 million of Americans live over a mile away from a supermarket and do not have a car. This equates to about 2.2 percent of all U.S. households. These statistics are according the data provided by the United States Department of Agriculture. The reports also indicate that some of these areas include vast, rural parts of West Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky, as well as urban areas like New York City, Chicago, Detroit, and Los Angeles. The people residing in majority of these food deserts are predominantly African Americans. Because the people who live in food deserts do not get proper supplements of fruits and vegetable, much of their diets are consisted of mainly junk food, fast food, and meats. As a result of this, today, more than one third of adults in America are obese. In addition to obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease can also be results of a lack of healthy food choices, which result from people buying their food from convenience stores that only sell processed foods and from fast food restaurants. This paper attempts to provide readers with a better understanding of the fact that not only do food deserts exists, they are threatening the lives of Amer... ... middle of paper ... ...Hobbiss, A. Food Deserts And How To Tackle Them: A Study Of One City's Approach.Health Education Journal, 137-149. Holzman, D. C. (2010, April 1). Food deserts and how to tackle them: a study of one city's approach: White House Proposes Healthy Food Financing Initiative. Environmental Health Perspectives. Health Education Journal June 2000 vol. 59 no. 2 137-149 Ploeg, M. ver; Breneman, V.; Farrigan, T.; Hamrick, K.; Hopkins, D.;Kaufman, P.; Lin, B. H.; Nord, M.; Smith, T.; Williams, R.; Kinnison, Access to affordable and nutritious food measuring and understanding food deserts and their consequences : report to Congress ([Rev. Sept. 3, 2009] ed.). (2009). Washington, D.C.: U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Economic Research Service. Shaw, H. J. (2006), Food Deserts: Towards the Development of a Classification. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 88: 231–247.

Show More
Related

  • Food Desert Rhetorical Analysis

    666 Words  | 2 Pages

    Many in the U.S., today, try to eat well,balanced, meals to order to maintain a healthy lifestyle. They do so by purchasing their food at farmers markets or making their own meals, so their food isn’t processed or genetically modified. Even though people are trying to maintain health in order to live long lives, without medical complications, many don’t have the opportunity to pursue life like this. In “Research shows food deserts more abundant in minority neighborhoods,” the author, Kelly Brooks, portrays an anecdote and logical reasoning, from Kelly Bower’s research, to thoroughly describe the food deserts in poor minority neighborhoods and how this issue needs to be repaired.

    Read More

  • Food Class Warfare By Tracie Mcmillan's Context

    710 Words  | 2 Pages

    In her essay, “Food’s Class Warfare,” author Tracie McMillan promotes the inclusion of both “individual changes and structural ones” (217), particularly “class consciousness” (217), in the fight for quality diets in America. She reveals the most common sides of the healthy food debate as the inherent “just-buy-better stuff logic” (215) and the opposing “structural challenges of eating well” (215). The main strategies for defeating the American “obesity epidemic” (216) have been reaching out to the individual, as well as changing the structure of the American food system itself. The favorite concept for structuralists is “food deserts - neighborhoods with insufficient grocery stores and thus insufficient supplies of healthy food” (216). She deems the concept insufficient in practice, as it ignores smaller markets and equates large stores with a healthy food source. While the individual viewpoint and structuralists argue with each other, they share common ideals. According to

    Read More

  • Food Stamps to SNAP

    1028 Words  | 3 Pages

    According to Dolgoff and Feldstein (2003), “the needs and goals of the Food Stamp Program are to alleviate hunger and malnutrition by enabling low-income households to buy a nutritious adequate diet” (p. 132). The program also improved the market for local merchants to produce food for eligible low-income households and other agencies such as the School Lunch Program which safeguard the health and wel...

    Read More

  • Food Deserts: Healthy Living In The Black Community

    1036 Words  | 3 Pages

    Food deserts are places where healthy foods are not produced nor sold. Unfortunately, Chicago is filled with food deserts. Approximately 600,000 people reside in areas that consist of food deserts (Gallagher, 2006). Nearly 200,000 of those people are children. These children do not have the opportunity for healthier options, which shows an increase in obesity rates (News One Staff, 2011). There are 77 Chicago communities and out of that 77, 23 are food deserts (Gallagher, 2006). Chicagoans-particularly the black communities- are forced to live off the accessible food that is near them. The food deserts are in Austin, North Lawndale, Armour Square, Near South Side, Fuller Park, Grand Boulevard, Washington Park, Woodlawn, West Lawn, Chicago Lawn, Englewood, Ashburn, Auburn Gresham, Beverly, Washington Heights, Morgan Park, Roseland, Pullman, South Deering, Riverdale, South Chicago, and West Pullman (Grossinger, 2007). The communities are usually served by junk food- filled corner stores, which do not offer an abundance of healthy foods. The communities are in desperate need of change.

    Read More

  • Omnivore's Dilemma By Michael Pollan

    969 Words  | 2 Pages

    Did you know that today, 2.1 billion people – nearly 30% of the world's population – are either obese or overweight because they ate unhealthy food and didn’t exercise? After reading the Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, I have learned about all the opportunities right here in Rochester that have to do with eating more local food. We should eat more local food because it is healthier for us and it helps the environment.

    Read More

  • Essay On Food Deserts

    768 Words  | 2 Pages

    “Food Deserts” are arears where people have a hard time finding affordable, healthy food. These places are usually low-income neighborhoods that do not have any supermarkets nearby but have convenience stores that sell junk food and fast food places around them. Ron Finley, a guerrilla gardener, lives in a “food desert” in South Central Los Angeles. He plants fruit and vegetable gardens to help nourish his community with healthy eating. In the article “Giving the Poor Easy Access to Healthy Food Doesn’t Mean They’ll Buy It,” Margot Sanger-Katz states that “merely adding a grocery store to a poor neighborhood doesn’t make a very big difference” because the diets of the residents living in those neighborhoods did not change. I think “food deserts” are only a part of the bigger problem in America because obesity is everywhere, not just in low-income

    Read More

  • Working Poor: Food Insecurity

    1285 Words  | 3 Pages

    U.S. Department of Agriculture. (2013, September ). Household food security in the united states in 2012. Retrieved from http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/err-economic-research-report/err155/report-summary.aspx

    Read More

  • Child Hunger in the USA

    1436 Words  | 3 Pages

    The United States is known as the wealthiest country in the world. But, there are many people that can't afford to buy food for their families, many are also homeless. “While hunger affects people of all ages, it's particularly devastating for children even short-term episodes of hunger can cause lasting damage."(“Child Nutrition Programs") Child hunger in the United States is caused by poverty, unemployment, food insecurity, and food shortage; however there are many solutions to this problem like FRAC strategies, food banks, summer feeding programs, and backpack feeding programs.

    Read More

  • Food Insecurity And Low Income Families

    1011 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program has been very beneficial to many households that do not know where their next meal is coming from by providing them with resources to acquire food. Many of those food insecure households, however, are faced with high rates of obesity that leads to a variety of other health issues. Research has shown that increasing nutritional education through programs that teach people to read labels and balance their diet works and can decrease obesity rates. Low income and minority households, the populations most affected by the issues of food insecurity and obesity, are especially in need of nutritional education. By expanding nutritional education for those households most at risk of obesity, a public health initiative could decrease the obesity levels in SNAP participants.

    Read More

  • Foreclosure.com Scholarship Essay

    2067 Words  | 5 Pages

    Before going any farther, I should clearly articulate my intentions in this seemingly non-lucrative venture. In the past few years, I’ve become fascinated with America’s food systems, the rise of organic and local food, and the injustice of “food deserts,” or areas that lack affordable nutritious food, that plague low income areas. Consequently, you could say that my direction in this plan is that of personal satisfaction, but I would assert that my goal is to remain true to the concept of sustainable development, and thus I wish to make ...

    Read More

  • Detroit Food Sovereignty Essay

    745 Words  | 2 Pages

    In 2011, Data Driven Detroit debunked the common notion that Detroit, as a whole, is a “food desert”, defined as an area where residents do not have accessibility of nutritious food (Oosting). This is important as it shows that the city has made some progress and is no longer considered a food desert. The issue with this is that most residents turned to gas stations and fast food restaurants due to their convenience and cheap price. While the city may have 115 full-service grocery stores, access to these food providers is often a burden for residents. These burdens include lack of transportation to the grocery stores and affordability. These behaviors lead to poor choices in diet, which has been proven to be correlated with health

    Read More

  • Annotated Bibliography: Annotated Bibliography Of Food Deserts

    1727 Words  | 4 Pages

    A food desert is a location in which a wide variety of nutrition food is not generally available (Wrigley et al. 261). Food deserts exist in places such as inner cities and isolated rural areas (Morton and Blanchard 1). The purpose of the paper supported by this annotated bibliography is to argue that food deserts do not exist because of discrimination against the poor, but because of forces related to supply and demand. This hypothesis ought to be kept in mind when considering each of the sources (Just and Wansink; Wrigley, Warm and Margetts; Jetter and Cassady; Epstein et al.; Schafft, Jensen and Hinrichs; Bitler and Haider) described in the annotated bibliography.

    Read More

  • Food Desert Essay

    1375 Words  | 3 Pages

    Food deserts low income areas, where people don’t have access to healthy and fresh foods for them to; in most of these areas there are no local stores or supermarket. Not having these things really affects the health of the people in these communities. In the article ‘The Origins of the Food Desert: Urban Inequality as Infrastructural Exclusion’ they state that these are, “Places without supermarkets—what many call “food deserts”—lack affordable fresh fruits and vegetables, as remaining corner stores are unable to procure and preserve wide varieties of fresh foods” (Deener). This shows that even though there may be some places to get food in these areas, there are only corner stores that do not provide the right types of food or there are fast food places. The places that aren’t there but need to be are supermarkets and places for people to get food that is healthier, than the food that they are already eating. These food deserts can lead to people’s health being affected badly; they may end up with weight issues, diabetes and other serious issues that can affect them in the long run. Food deserts came to be in the 1950’s-60’s when supermarkets became a “suburban phenonium”, this was not good for corner stores in the cities; it then leads to the corner stores in the cities failing, which then lead to the start of the food deserts. Over the past couple of years people and groups have been trying

    Read More

  • Food Desert Essay

    2044 Words  | 5 Pages

    Food deserts are a serious problem in this country and affects many people across the United States. The official definition of one is “The USDA defines a food desert as a low-income census tract in which more than 500 people or 33 percent of the population live at least a mile from a supermarket that does at least $2 million in annual sales” (Dutko 2). In many states across the U.S., there are urban cities that have little to no access to grocery stores or supermarkets, severely limiting their supply and likelihood of receiving fresh produce to give to their families. Living in a food desert comes with a vast array of problems to those who live in them. Certain companies think that it is unwise to put in grocery stores in these urban areas;

    Read More

  • Sustainability of The Global Food System

    1117 Words  | 3 Pages

    Knox, Paul, and Sllie Marston. "Chapter 8 Food and Agriculture." In Human Geography: Places and Regions in Global Context. Glenview, Il: Pearson, 2013. 266-298.

    Read More

More about People Who Live in Food Deserts in America

Open Document