Hungry for Good | The Plight of Food Deserts

“Please place your tray tables and seat in the upright position and get ready for take off.”

I shifted uncomfortably in my window seat, trying to figure out what to do with my life, both long term and in the short gap of the flight in between take off and that magic point at 10,000 feet when approved electronic devices were allowed to entertain me again.

I pulled the inflight magazine out of the seat pocket in front of me and thumbed to the table of contents.

Food deserts across America, the title of an article read. I remembered sounding it out again in my head, just to make sure I hadn’t missed an extra “s”. Mmmm…desserts.

This article was my first introduction to the phenomenon known as “food deserts”: geographic areas where residents’ access to affordable, healthy food options (namely fresh fruits and vegetables) is restricted or nonexistent due to the absence of grocery stores within expedient travelling distance. The concept of food deserts was uncovered when Center for Disease Control (CDC) and census report data revealed a curiously strong correlation between an individual’s cardiovascular health and their zip code.

Guiltily I think of the Whole Foods four blocks in one direction from my house, the Trader Joes three blocks in the other direction, and the Farmers’ Market available twice a week directly across the street from my house. And yet many people have limited to no access to fresh food due to lack of availability. While people are surrounded by corner stores and supermarkets that carry processed foods, or an overabundance of fast food chains selling cheap foods that are high in fat, salt, and sugar. Arguably unhealthy eating may seem economically cheaper in the short term, the long-term consequences these consumers are tallying up increase risk for serious even fatal health disorders.

Luckily public awareness on the subject has been growing. Movements like that of First Lady Michelle Obama (“Let’s Move”) include goals of eradicating food deserts by increasing people’s access to healthy food options. Still, awareness isn’t the only battle to be fought; we must start to get creative to eliminate this issue. While utilizing support of government tax benefits or endowments of charitable entrepreneurs is effective, we cannot rely solely on these types of windfalls. Initiatives from U.S. universities have created programs where food trucks deliver fresh produce at affordable prices and some of these trucks can even collect food stamps. There is no easy answer to this problem but with great minds motivated to find solutions, we can expect great victories in the future.

I found a great quote while researching food deserts where University of Michigan Professor George Kaplan commented on the term food deserts, saying “A desert is, of course, a place distinguished by the absence of vegetation, rain, etc., which is the sense in which the word is used in this report. Food deserts are defined as “areas with no or distant grocery stores.” But the word “desert” is also a verb — “to leave someone without help or in difficult situation and not come back.” This seems to me to capture an important dimension of food deserts not conveyed by the noun.”

We need to decide here and now that while some people have been left without help in difficult situations, we are sending help, and with each individual effort to shrink the food deserts, we are coming back.

Trader Joe’s, knowing that 40% of food sold at U.S. grocery stores gets thrown out because of overstocking or being past the “sell-by” date, has arranged a new food discount store called Daily Table the repackages and offers this food at deeply discounted prices. 

Read more: http://inhabitat.com/former-trader-joes-president-plans-to-dish-out-expired-food/ 

Initiatives like “Freshmobile” carry fresh, healthier food options to underserved communities in “pop-up grocery stores” in trailers and traveling food trucks. “The movement first got going in 2003, when a Bay Area group introduced organic food to West Oakland neighborhoods in a roaming solar-powered, biodiesel-burning food truck. Over the years, the mobile market idea gained steam. In June 2011, Fresh Moves, a Chicago non-profit launched its one-aisle grocery store on board a donated Chicago Transit Authority bus, and currently serves Chicago’s West Side neighborhoods. This August, the Seattle-based group Stockbox Grocers will launch its first store in the city’s South Park neighborhood, serving healthy food and to-go meals out of reclaimed shipping containers and storefronts. Residents of Portland, Ore., Kansas City and Baton Rouge are also seeing groceries-on-the-go rolling through this summer.”

Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2012/07/24/can-pop-up-grocery-stores-solve-the-problem-of-food-deserts/ 

Take a look at your own community and decide what you can do today.