How to Fix One of the Worst Healthy Food 'Deserts' in America

[Jilly_in_VA]

Woonsocket, Rhode Island, is home to a cultural center, a textile museum, and a World War II memorial park. What it doesn’t have is grocery stores. There’s exactly one in the city of 43,000: a small Price Rite tucked away in the far northeast corner. That means the majority of the town’s residents live more than a mile from a supermarket or large grocery store.

In a state that holds the unfortunate record for most low-income food deserts in the U.S., Woonsocket, a place where 22 percent of people live in poverty, has become a poster child for the problem: Although the city makes up just 4 percent of the state’s population, it is its most severe food desert, with estimates suggesting two of five residents have trouble getting affordable foods—whether because of financial struggles or a lack of transportation access, or both.

Woonsocket local Charmaine Webster sees the pervasiveness of the food desert every Tuesday when she heads to the one local farmers market, which is co-hosted by her employer, community health center Thundermist Health, and the nonprofit Farm Fresh Rhode Island.

"A lot of people that are ill affected by the fact that we’re living in a food desert don’t necessarily frequent the farmers market,” she said. “They’re just so accustomed to the status quo.”

https://www.vice.com/en/article/88nyqk/how-to-fix-worst-healthy-food-deserts-america

[Scrivener7]

1. Don't most people live "more than a mile" from a grocery store?

The 43000 to one store is quite extreme though. With that kind of customer base, they could probably provide healthy food. Though the article suggests that healthy food doesn't sell in the area.

[Klaralven]

6. There's a Stop & Shop 1.5 miles NE, a Stop & Shop 1.5 miles S, and an Aldi's 2 miles S of city hall

There are probably zoning or property tax issues that make putting a supermarket inside the city limits undesirable.

There are a half dozen Hispanic, Indian, and Asian stores in the city.

[Sympthsical]

16. Yeah, I'm trying to figure out if this place was the best example

I looked through, and it looks like a typical old colonial town/suburban vibe. Is transportation really an issue there? Genuinely asking, because it isn't obvious in what I googled.

Growing up, my town of about 30k only had one grocery store. And that thing was well over a mile away from most of the town (it had to do with zoning and forest preserves).

If there's a transportation issue, I get it a bit more.

When I think food desert, I usually think of inside major cities, where people don't own cars and transportation isn't great, and the grocery store is way the hell over yonder. So people buy from corner shops or convenience stores where prices are jacked way the hell up and healthy options aren't a thing.

Right now, my Safeway is a little over a mile down the street, and it feels really close. I walk to my gym next door most mornings and just grab things as needed. The only time I actively need a car is for a monthly Costco run.

This article seems really strange to me. Just a strange choice. Stranger still given the information you just provided.

[Klaralven]

19. There is also a wholesale grocer that does cash and carry retail business in Woonsocket

The original article emphasizes farm markets, but around here farm markets are the priciest place to buy produce or groceries. There are some specialty grocers with better quality and lower prices. Then come the supermarkets with lower quality and prices.

1 to 2 miles is also a reasonable distance to walk, and these day the supermarkets will no doubt deliver all over Woonsocket.

[Jilly_in_VA]

2. Have you ever lived in a REAL food desert?

I have. I once lived in an apartment that was a mile WALK in either direction to what would compare to a bodega, I guess. Pretty poor selections, almost no fresh food, lots of junk and snacks and pre-packaged stuff, and all of it overpriced. If I wanted to get to a supermarket, the bus stop was six blocks away and I had to take my little granny cart with me and ride another mile. That supermarket was also overpriced because it was near the campus and catered to the student population, so they could get away with it. I could take another bus and transfer and go to a different supermarket, but that was a 40 minute trip.

Not everyone has a car.

[fescuerescue]

12. That would fit most suburbs.

Most suburbs are a mile away from a grocery store.

I guess now that you point it out, I live in a food desert. I hadn't really noticed before though.

[Jilly_in_VA]

14. But do you have a car?

This was in a downtown area and I didn't. Most of my neighbors didn't either.

[fescuerescue]

20. I do.

Seems like those areas where folks dont have cars, but are in dense clusters would be ideal for a grocery store.

What is driving them away?

[LakeArenal]

3. Almost everyone I know is far from a grocery.

Sounds like mass transit might be a problem too.

[Jilly_in_VA]

5. That was my point

wasn't it? Not only nowhere to shop, but difficult to get there.

[Scrivener7]

13. But really, the article is about how, even with the farmers market nearby, the eating habits are not

improving.

So I'm not sure what to do about that. Definitely, fix the mass transit issue. We need to do that everywhere. But the article is saying that is not going to change the nutrition issue.

[milestogo]

4. I read "Worst Healthy Food Desserts"

[robbob]

7. I know! Me too!

I was looking forward to some recipes for terribly unhealthy desserts! 🍰

[milestogo]

8. Or really healthy desserts made with vegetables that taste bad!

[robbob]

9. Actually, what I really thought

Was that it would be “healthy” (in quotes); desserts that we assume are good for us but are actually full of sugar. Like all the sweetened yogurts out there. Or the “granola” bars we scarf down that are triple dipped in chocolate. Likewise “energy bars” we eat that are really just chocolate bars with a reassuring label on them.

[Lancero]

10. I'm sorry, but what? 1 grocery store, in a city of 43k?

Um... How?

Seriously, nearby town of 29k has 2 wal-marts, 1 krogers, 1 Box-10, 5 dollar generals, 2 dollar trees, 1 family dollar, and three various 'health foods' stores. And those are just the ones I've been to, I can think of another 5 that I've never bothered stopping at. Probably a lot more places I've never heard of, either because I've overlooked them while driving through town, or they're in the one quarter of town I never have reason to drive through.

Whoever owns that store is certainly making bank with that large of a potential consumer base and no competition.

[Mosby]

11. The Root: The Myth of the Food Desert

https://www.npr.org/2010/12/15/132076786/the-root-the-myth-of-the-food-desert


The no-supermarket paradigm discourages us from considering that human beings acquire -- through childhood experience, cultural preferences and economics -- a palate. Note that the economy is part of the equation: The cheapness of sugary drinks is notorious, thanks to the popularity and influence of the muckraking 2008 documentary Food, Inc. and Eric Schlosser's best-selling book Fast Food Nation, which was made into a movie in 2006.

Culture, too, creates a palate -- and to point that out is not to find "fault." Example: Slavery and sharecropping didn't make healthy eating easy for black people back in the day. Salt and grease were what they had, and Southern blacks brought their culinary tastes North (Zora Neale Hurston used to bless her friend Langston Hughes with fried-chicken dinners). Fried food, such as fried chicken, was also easy to transport for blacks traveling in the days of Jim Crow, when bringing your own food on the road was a wise decision.

But that did help create what has lived on as a palate even after the circumstances that created it have changed. That happens with all human beings, as with CDs, designed to be round like LPs. Someone raised on fruity drinks and fried food is as likely to prefer them permanently -- even if Fairway is down the street -- as someone raised on pita bread and hummus will eat that way forever. I was raised on a cuisine stamped by, if not centered on, the salty realm, and I alternate eternally between resisting and parsimoniously indulging that taste for grease.

All of which is to say that our take on the obesity issue at hand cannot be that sugary and high-fat food is always the only food that is available to poor people within walking distance. It simply isn't true. If we assume that the next step from the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act will be to make sure all poor people live three blocks or fewer from a supermarket, we will see a problem continue.

[hunter]

17. Things go most highly wrong when you add high fructose corn syrup and...

... a sedentary lifestyle to a high fat diet.

It's the shelf space taken up by two liter bottles of soda and gallon jugs of "orange drink" that characterize many food deserts.

[Mosby]

18. Yeah, and one thing no one talks about

Is how chain grocery stores tend to micromarket to the neighborhood in order to maximize profit. The product mix they offer is based on local demographics. I live near a bunch of Fry's stores, and every one carries different products.

So living close to a grocery store doesn't mean better food at all, necessarily.

[hunter]

15. There are dozens of small shops selling healthy food in my city...

... and its not expensive.

When my wife and I were living in a rougher part of town I could walk to places that sold bulk rice and beans, and a wide variety of fruits and vegetables. There was a little carnicería just around the corner. It was anything but a "food desert." Prices weren't any higher than Safeway.

We live in a California community with large immigrant communities. 40% of the children in our public schools come from homes where English isn't the primary language. These immigrants bring their food traditions with them and establish supply chains to meet that demand.

Most food deserts seem to be a consequence of cultural oppression and poverty.

Reconnecting people with rich, nutritious, traditional diets is something that ought to be encouraged, even subsidized by the government if necessary. Markets need to be established.

If children are not learning how to create healthy inexpensive meals at home it's something that needs to be taught in school.

[Jilly_in_VA]

21. One of the things that seems to help the most

is getting people involved in community gardening projects. Plow up a few vacant lots and lease them for a tiny fee to neighborhood folks, help them grow the food they are familiar with, and you would be surprised. The problem is often selfish landlords who would rather see the lots lie idle.

[womanofthehills]

22. I live 11 miles from a small grocery store

And 45 miles from a large one. There are food deserts and real food deserts.