Food Deserts
You can't survive on gas station food alone, but what if you didn't have a choice.
I am lucky and have been for most of my life. I am grateful when I wake up every day whether it be rain or shine, for being able to take a breath, step outside, and experience nature.
Likewise, I am lucky to have the privilege to buy groceries from which I can make healthy meals for my family.
But what if I wasn’t so lucky, if I was down on my luck and wasn’t able to access the nourishing, whole foods that I now can just go out and purchase. What would I do if I found myself living in a food desert?
What’s a food desert? The USDA defines a food desert as when a certain percentage of a county's population is not located within 10 miles of a large food retailer. Large food retailers include supermarkets with 50 or more employees, supercenters, and wholesale clubs.
I feel that the USDA’s definition of what constitutes a food desert is a fairly narrow viewpoint and doesn’t represent the reality of the situation.
Just over a decade ago my wife and I found ourselves living in an urban environment without a car.
Not having a car wasn’t the end of the world because we could walk just about anywhere we needed to. I was within walking distance from work and we didn’t have any kids yet, so we were okay.
Walking almost everywhere was great, I got into better shape, lost weight, and got to experience some sort of nature daily. However, the one aspect of being vehicleless that proved the most challenging was grocery shopping.
Walking to the store just to grab a few items was no problem, or stopping by the convenience store across the street from our downtown apartment wasn’t an issue either, but major grocery shopping was.
The grocery store closest to us was still around a couple of miles away, which isn’t a bad walk at all, 2 miles there 2 miles back, a 4-mile round trip, that’s fine, when you’re not carrying multiple bags of groceries. Add any weight to that walk and it becomes a workout.
Like I said this was still all ok with me until we had a newborn baby, then it changed.
You’re now pushing a stroller with all of the groceries that you usually would have purchased pre-baby along with all things that babies need, primarily diapers and wipes, needless to say, that’s quite a load.
I was fine with all of this because thankfully, I was young, able-bodied, and willing to do whatever it took to provide for my small family.
Not having a car when you need one isn’t great but it’s really a first-world problem, right?
In the same city of about 80,000 people, at the other end of town, in a different neighborhood, that same store is now 3 or 4 miles away.
Three to four miles is nothing if you are able-bodied or have adequate transportation, but this is a lower-income neighborhood where a good percentage of the people either don’t have a vehicle, are disabled or are elderly, grocery shopping has now become a task in and of itself.
There was a grocery store that served this community for many years. It was reasonably priced and convenient for anyone in the community who wanted to shop there, sometimes I would even go out of my way to shop there and it was always busy.
A few years went by and we moved to a small town a few miles north of our downtown apartment, but that community grocery store was nearby where I worked so I would occasionally stop by and grab a few groceries.
One day I pulled into the parking lot to find the store had closed permanently. I am always upset, for many reasons, when a business that I frequent closes.
I think about the jobs that are lost, and how quickly will the employees be able to find work, but it wasn’t until recently that I realized how this particular closure affected the community that it served.
As I said, this community is a lower-income community and most of its residents are disadvantaged in some way or another so it hits them harder than it would an affluent or even semi-affluent community.
A trip to the nearest store from this community, you’ll spend an hour on the bus both ways, plus the time it takes to shop.
These are people in wheelchairs or require some kind of ambulatory assistance and if they can get around on their own physically, they may not be doing so well mentally. Sometimes for those folks taking the time to plan a shopping trip and then actually execute it could be very mentally taxing.
Are there other options in this neighborhood?
No, not really, unless you call gas stations, convenience stores, and smoke shops a viable source for groceries. Those are terrible options and are completely unacceptable even if you don’t have kids to feed, you can’t sustain a healthy lifestyle if your meals come from 7-Eleven.
Thankfully for this community, there is a very good food bank, food share boxes, and other free or reduced options for those who can’t make it to the store across town. And as good as these options are, they still don’t replace the community grocery store that once was just right around the corner.
So, why did this store close? Was it not financially viable for the large corporation to keep this store going? Was it purely an economic decision?
Only corporate ownership can answer that question. The true impact made by the decision to close this business may never be appreciated by the powers that be, but believe me when I say it was fully realized by those who needed it most.
A sad truth on many levels! It deeply disturbs this seventy five year old. I simply do not know what to do except pray.
Dang. It's good to call attention to this issue! It's not something I think about every day. It's easy for stuff like this to fall through the cracks, but it all fits in and it's important to our food ecosystem (and to our economy and to our people).