Food Deserts: A Case Study

In terms of governmental involvement in the management of food deserts, we argue that very little has been done legislatively by the Metro Nashville and Davidson county government. Despite the fact that several areas in the Davidson County have been identified as food deserts by the USDA, little to no legislation has been created to combat the problem and its effects on the health of its citizens. Edgehill has been put on the USDA map of food deserts, because it qualifies “as a “low-access community,” [where] at least 500 people and/or at least 33 percent of the census tract's population must reside more than one mile from a supermarket or large grocery store (for rural census tracts, the distance is more than 10 miles)” (USDA). However, the

Daily Bread Food Bank. (2010). Fighting Hunger. 2010 Profile of Hunger in the GTA. Retrieved

Furthermore, you should not give poor donations for items sure as, junk food that can add to the problem. For example, sheet cakes, holiday cakes, sugary sodas and other processed bakery items. Our group is looking to purchase healthy food to give our community food bank, which includes, canned foods, pasta, veggie, dry cereals, potted meats, and nuts. Besides, U.S. has increase to forty-eight million of people going hungry by 2012, a five-fold jump since the late 1960's. Finding food has become a central worry for millions of Americans. According to National Geographic Magazine. This is not the solution for food poverty, but it removes the responsibility of the government to tackle hunger allowing them to not fix the gap between our income and the cost of nutritional food. Finally, the food banks are a charitable organization to distribute food to those who have difficulty purchasing food to avoid

Considering the following statistics, it is clear why Hunger Free Colorado’s work is so important: Nearly 1 in 7 Coloradans struggled with hunger in 2013, facing times when there was not enough money to buy food for their families or themselves (Colman-Jenson, Gregory, & Singh, 2013). More than 1 in 5 Colorado households with children (22%) reported food hardship, facing financial challenges to put food on the table (Food Research and Action Center, 2013). More than 1 in 8 Coloradans lived in poverty, including 1 in 6 kids, during 2013 (Bishaw & Fontenot, 2014).

“…food insecurity is ‘limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods or limited or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable food in socially acceptable ways.”(Block&Kouba, 2006, p.1). The absence of healthy and quality food to residents, of urban food desert communities, is a civil right concern because these residents do not have equal access to healthy foods as do other communities. Urban food desert communities are met with food insecurity when grocery stores are vandalized, rodent droppings are found around the produce, and the produce is rotten or has poor quality. According to a report on the study of food

Food desert are urban, suburb, and rural boroughs without ready access to fresh healthy and economical food. The communities that are considered food deserts, has no grocery stores or supermarkets within a walking distance from their household. The families that live in those areas do not have access to transportation; therefore, they consume food that is accessible, which is usually processed. Most stores that people, living in a food desert, go to is convenience stores, which are usually near their households, and are accessible to some healthy foods. Another, place where many people receive their food from is fast food, and the food from those places is greasy and fattening. The lack of access to healthy food could lead to a lot of disasters,

Gleaners is extremely creative when it comes to how they go about serving the communities in which they serve. They help to serve families, kids, and seniors that live in underserved areas of Indiana. They strive to make sure they make food more accessible in communities where there are a lack of many resources to enable the families or seniors to get nutritious food. Gleaners is always responding to the needs of these specific individuals. This food bank that is a member of Feeding America has two programs that specifically aim to provide children with food. One program is the Backsacks; this is where they send food home on the weekends to the at-risk students. They are sent home with enough food for roughly 5 small meals and some snacks to

Poverty is an issue that can be discussed at great lengths, but the real challenge is finding effective ways to reduce or eradicate poverty. It is important to spend quality time developing approaches to the issue of poverty and how to alleviate it. Individuals living in poverty lead a life of limited opportunities and one of these limited opportunities is access to good quality healthy food. The American Nutrition Association considers this lack of access as a Food Desert defined as, “parts of the country vapid of fresh fruit, vegetables, and other healthful whole foods, usually found in impoverished areas” ("USDA Defines Food Deserts | American Nutrition Association," n.d.). One way in which American’s can work towards a future with less poverty and eventually one with little to no poverty would be to eliminate the existence of Food Deserts.

What exactly qualifies a neighborhood to be part of a food desert? Food deserts usually have a bunch of blocks without a corner grocery store. In a more severe case an entire neighborhood, or a whole bunch of neighborhoods do not have a mainstream grocery store. A mainstream grocery stored would be a grocery store like a Jewel, a Whole Foods, or an Aldi, where

Food deserts, defined by the Center for Disease Control (CDC), are areas “that lack access to affordable fruits, vegetables, whole grains, low-fat milk, and other foods that make up the full range of a healthy diet”. The causes and impacts of food deserts are based on racial, health, economic, and environmental factors that influence one another. In response to this issue, there is both local and federal action being taken to find a solution.

There is growing trend of cities across the United States that do not have access to food such as places in Buffalo, Baltimore, or Detroit. According to the USDA, a food desert is to qualify as a “low-access community,” at least 500 people and/or at least 33 percent of the census tract 's population must reside more than one mile from a supermarket or large grocery store (for rural census tracts, the distance is more than 10 miles). You can even look up a food desert locater on the USDA website and it will provide you areas where it is hard to buy broccoli or carrots in red marked areas. Going to the

Food deserts are one of the biggest problems in society, as the authors of Food Justice bring up (Gottlieb & Joshi, 2010). In fact, Indianapolis is ranked worst in the nation for food deserts. So what is a food desert? A food desert is when places are left with the lack of availability of nutritious foods and high rates of poverty. Often times, these are known as grocery gaps because grocery stores move out of the area, normally located in low-income communities. It makes sense that they would move to make more profit, but it leaves those in the community left with essentially nothing. Also, most people living in a low-income community do not have access to transportation, so they cannot get to grocery stores that are outside of walking distance. This is why Gleaners, a local food justice organization, steps in and fills in places where grocery stores have left. The program that works to fix this is Mobile Pantries. As I will explore later, Mobile Pantries allows people who cannot reach grocery stores the ability to get nutritious foods they need. Mobile Pantries give people a sense of going to the grocery store and picking out healthy foods. While consumer choice is limited, as Patel mentions, Mobile Pantries still gives people healthy options (Patel, 2014). Gleaners is a part of the Food Justice Movement because while they are not changing consumer choice, they are providing individuals with the option of healthy foods and working to end hunger and obesity

Food deserts are one of the main causes of obesity in lower income areas, and while initiatives are being created to solve this problem, more than just a few initiatives are needed to change the obesity issue.

An example of a food desert is Chicago, Illinois. One out of every four children lives in poverty and many households are isolated in low income areas with lack of available transportation and a climate that contributes to the creation of food deserts. In Chicago, over the course of 40 years, there was a huge disinvestment in grocery stores in the south side of the city and even in areas that did have access to grocery stores, many did not have access to healthy, fresh foods. In fact, one study was conducted that found that when asking local children what color a banana was based on what they had witnessed in local stores, the most common response was “brown” (Walker).

Although food deserts have both major and deadly impacts on people’s lives, the solutions to ending them, and the people needed to execute the solutions are quite simple. Because attracting grocery