Research/position paper, Food Desert - Essay Example

Food Deserts: Areas that have scar of grocery stores, vegetables and fruits at affordable prices, low-fat food, and items of a healthy diet are known as food deserts. Food deserts may be found anywhere in the suburban, rural and urban communities. A vast majority of food deserts are low-income regions, though many rich people live in such areas as well. Food deserts are abundant in fast food restaurants like McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut etc. Access to healthy food plays a big role in making the diet of people healthy in general.

When grocery stores are so far away from the community that people have to drive to them and find it difficult to approach them on foot, people would rather resort to the tasty food available at walking distance. Fast food restaurants have crowded big cities. Towns have historically been planned in such a way that grocery stores have been limited to the markets. In many big cities of the world, it is hard to find a fresh fruit or vegetable shop at walking distance from the house. Of all households in the United States, 2.

3 million, or 2.2 percent, live more than a mile from a supermarket and do not have access to a vehicle. An additional 3.4 million households, or 3.2 percent of all households, live between one-half to 1 mile and do not have access to a vehicle. (Ploeg, 2009). Nonetheless, this is not the only reason why people have ruined their eating habits. A whole range of other factors including pop culture, race and economy have their role in making people consume fast food. However, the definition becomes difficult to objectify when certain questions are taken into consideration, e.g. How far is too far to make it to a grocery store?

And how much price is too much for a fruit or vegetable? The biggest victims of food deserts are African Americans as a lot of food deserts exist in Chicago where the residents are more than 600,000 in number (Dolan and Howard, 2010). This can be clearly seen in the figure below that compares the African American population in Chicago to populations of other ethnicities: Comparison of affected populations in Chicago by food deserts (Dolan and Howard, 2010). In the food balance score prepared by Gallaher and the team, food deserts in Chicago were found to be the most “out of balance” regions for the African Americans in particular (Whitacre, Tsai, and Mulligan, 2009, p. 15). A lot of African Americans are suffering from such disorders as obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes and hypertension as a result of living in the food deserts in Chicago.

Food deserts are very dangerous for people who live in them. With lack of access to good shops in the vicinity for a long time, residents of food deserts become used to consuming unhealthy food and cause irreparable damage to their health before they even realize it. In order to improve the situation, there is dire need to revise the town planning in a way that people find it is to approach fresh fruits and vegetables. References: Dolan, R., and Howard, K. (2010). Chicago food deserts hit hard at residents’ health.

Retrieved from http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=161115. Ploeg, M. V. (2009). Access to Affordable and Nutritious Food: Measuring and Understanding Food Deserts and Their Consequences. United States Department of Agriculture. Whitacre, P., Tsai, P., and Mulligan, J. (2009). The public health effects of food deserts: workshop summary. USA: National Academy of Sciences.