Are Food Deserts Just a Mirage?

Written by: Siria Contreras

It seems as though each day there is a new “hot term” that injects itself via the vernacular of those in-the-know early adopters and often-time self-professed experts into our daily lives.

One of those that has been thrown around in recent times is the notion of “food deserts”

In fact the term has gained such sufficient traction and buzz as to merit an official definition by the USDA, who define the term “as parts of the country vapid of fresh fruit, vegetables, and other healthful whole foods, usually found in impoverished areas. This is largely due to a lack of grocery stores, farmers’ markets, and healthy food providers.”

I just recently revisited an article by one of my favorite digital destinations, Citylab, that really broke down the argument that the dwellers of the so-called food deserts typically had poorer eating habits than those who resided in areas with more abundant grocery shopping options.

Citing new data from economists at NYU, Stanford, etc. they dispelled some of the preconceived notions, bringing to light what should be the basis of any scientific assumptions when it comes to human observations—that there is no “one” factor to blame.

A key takeaway was that a lack of universal education around nutrition and a bit of stigma attached to healthy lifestyles (that only those with money can dedicate the time to practice better self-care) played a larger factor in poor nourishment than did the disadvantage of their geographic location.

Per the article, titled “It’s Not the Food Deserts, It’s the Inequality”,

“the argument that food deserts alone are not to blame for the eating habits of people in low-income neighborhoods. The biggest difference in what we eat comes not from where we live per se, but from deeper, more fundamental differences in income and, especially, in education and nutritional knowledge, which shape our eating habits and in turn impact our health.”

Olivia and I have had this conversation numerous times, as insistent as we are in having a true and realistic understanding in what drives certain eating choices we are passionate and certain in our knowledge that it is education (or a re-education if you will) around food and short-term vs. long-term value of what we put in our bodies that will cause people to truly start to make those shifts in their daily consumption habits.

“To gauge the quality of food and nutrition by income groups and across different geographies, the study uses data from the Nielsen Homescan panel on purchases of groceries and packaged food and drink items between 2004 and 2015, which it then evaluates in terms of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Healthy Eating Index. It studies the gap between high- and low-income households: namely, those with annual incomes of $70,000 or more, and low-income households with incomes of less than $25,000 per year.

The study reinforces the notion that food deserts are disproportionately found in disadvantaged neighborhoods. It finds that more than half (55 percent) of all ZIP codes with a median income below $25,000 fit the definition of food deserts—that’s more than double the share of food-desert ZIP codes across the country as a whole (24 percent).

Also, both high- and low-income households, including those living in food deserts, travel relatively similar distances to reach grocery stores. The average American travels roughly 5.5 miles to buy their groceries. Low-income households travel slightly less distance, an average of 4.8 miles. Americans who live in food deserts across the board travel farther, an average of 7 miles or so. But that includes those who live in rural areas. Those in urban food deserts travel a bit less than the overall average, while low-income households that live in urban food deserts and do not own a car—the group that the food-desert argument is mainly about—travel just 2 miles on average.”

A fascinating article worth reading, which you can read it in it’s entirety here for those of you who are fans of data, critical thinking, and common sense and who are working to effect change in this space like we at The Nourish Foundation are.