So I was looking at a Houston Chronicle article about maps that described Houston, and there was one describing food deserts.
I looked at the one near my house, and it’s absurd, at least by the standards and geography of the area.
There are several land tracts that are technically food deserts because they’re more than 1 mile from a grocery store… because they’re freaking industrial parks. Or there are others where they’re like exactly 1.1 miles from a huge supermarket in two separate directions. Or where they may be more than 1 mile from a grocery store, but that’s because there are no roads of a suitable size going through the area to put a supermarket on. In several cases, there are grocery stores exactly on the border of the tract, and the thing making the tract a “food desert” is the geometry of the tract itself, not some mythical lack of grocery stores in the area. In some cases, there are grocery stores WITHIN the tracts themselves. How is it still a food desert if there’s a supermarket within the tract?
Drawing 1 mile radius circles around every grocery store I can find in the area- including ethnic ones, gives me TINY little food deserts for the most part, and the majority of those are within well-to-do areas, or are industrial parks, parkland or cemeteries. Most of the “desert” regions overlap multiple stores within a mile.
I’m not sure what they’re trying to prove here, but their map is inaccurate as hell;
According to the atlas, I’m in the “green” class of food desert. I have a car, so I’ve never experienced suffering because the closest supermarket is 2.3 miles away from me. But if I weren’t so fortunate to have my own wheels, yes, it would be a pain in the ass. (Please note that I walk six miles a day, and I have a sturdy granny cart and everything.)
What I would disagree with is setting the threshold of a desert so low. A distance of two miles makes sense to me. But a mile? And it seems to me that public transit should be considered. While it would suck to have to walk to the grocery store, I do have the option to hop on the bus–which will let me off right there. It would still be inconvenient (especially if I had children or mobility issues). But would it be an inconvenience worthy of policy intervention?
Also, it is not like the fast food places are located any closer to me than the grocery store. In my mixed income neighborhood, if you’re obese and malnutritioned, it’s not because you only have access to a 7-11.
Just checked my town. According to the map, a large desert starts just down the block from me. But the majority of the area is a large flood control channel, open areas or horse property. On top of that, I know of at least three small ethnic markets on the edges of the desert, but on the side of the street that should decrease the size of it. Not to mention a very bad craft brewery.
So the federal government is trying to frighten people with a scary-sounding term that’s actually defined in a stupid way and tells us nothing? And using our own money to do it?
Meh. I lived in an actual food desert, and it sucked. I ended up with a lot of meals out of either the cheap corner store that only sold things like Oreos and tortilla chips, or from the massively overpriced bodega that will gladly sell you a tomato for $3.00.
I live in an actual desert so I’m not surprised that there are some nearby, and the 50 people in that unincorporated area have to drive everywhere. But the biggest closest one (all colors) literally has a Target in the center of it. I know it’s not strictly a grocery store, even though it has everything a normal grocery store has plus more.
By those standards, pretty much everyone I know lives in a food desert. It’s the norm to drive to go the grocery store. They are in the commercial zones, all fairly near each other. People don’t want grocery stores in their neighborhood.
And this is not remotely uncommon. The US is basically a driving culture, with the exception of a few cities. We drive to work and school–why not drive to get food?
I am not sure exactly what the excitement is about. Clicking on an actual location, “desert” or not, provides a pop-up window that explains the specific conditions for that location, including the information of how many households, by number and percent of population, are affected. So places like industrial parks should show a minuscule percentage of affected people.
There are such things as genuine food deserts and the map appears to simply provide census information for the whole country rather than selectively indicating those deserts.
The idea of “food deserts” seems intended to rile people up and push emotional buttons. The reality is, to a very large extent, that grocery stores are placed based on supply and demand. If there is no grocery store in an area, that means either that the people there do not want one or cannot afford one. Since many “food deserts” have high-priced convenience stores that do sell food, the second option (people there can’t afford food) is absurd. The likely reason, therefore, that there are no grocery stores in food deserts is because the inhabitants don’t want them.
If you try to claim that a high crime rate is keeping grocery stores away - I also say bullcrud. High crime neighborhoods don’t keep pawn shops, payday loan places, and liquor stores away, and people don’t need those things as much as they do food. Therefore, some people there obviously do have money to spend.
FWIW, 11% of adult Americans do not have a driver’s license. And not all of them live in Manhattan. The notion that “all Americans drive everywhere” is not particularly true, and you still have to eat even if you are elderly or half-blind.
I’m not saying they don’t exist, but rather that the way that they’re defined on that map is VERY dependent on the geometry of each tract, and the geography of the area.
For example, in one “desert” near my house, the tract is drawn in such a way that the far northwest corner is like 1.2 miles from the nearest grocery store, and that far northwest corner is literally defined by a major highway interchange. 99% of the tract is within 1 mile of the local grocery store, and the remaining part isn’t, because you know, there’s 1/3 of a mile on either side that’s highway, access roads and easements. It’s not some major failing on the part of Dallas- it’s a screwy way to draw the tract. And another, if you zoom in close enough, you can freaking see “ALDI” on the Google map beneath the green tint!
I’m of the opinion that making inaccurate maps like this does the concept a disservice- it gets people looking at it and saying “This is bullshit!” due to cruddy cartography and data visualization. If the maps were actually accurate, then people might pay them attention.
Yes. Using poorly matched or even gerrymandered boundaries does a disservice to the idea, especially combined with a “winner take all” scenario where the presence of even a single “out of range” plot within a jurisdiction results in the entire jurisdiction being labeled a “food desert”.
Using the same type of methodology, I could download listings from the sex offender registry, identify which counties or other local jurisdictions have at least one registered sex offender living anywhere within their boundaries, and then publish a map of “US child danger zones” that covers 98% of the country.
The whole idea of food deserts is to try to absolve the poor of any responsibility. They come up with horrible statistics like how 1 in 5 children is at risk of hunger. When it is pointed out that the children who are risk of hunger are actually eating more calories than those who are not, they then come up with the ridiculous idea of a food desert. The reason poor people are fat is not that they enjoy fattening food but that they live in food deserts where only fattening food is available. As you point out, if the poor wanted fresh fruits and vegetable then the stores would sell them. Food desert is a foolish term for a problem that does not exist so the busybodies can feel good about themselves.
So, when I had to walk two miles in the snow to get basic groceries, in a dense urban area where cars are not the norm, that’s just nothing? Just a non-thing?
Maybe it’s not a top concern, maybe it barely even makes the list. But it I don’t think it benefits anyone to have areas of a city that are severely out of reach of basic goods and services. At the very least, it depresses property values in a way that makes for slums. We’ve had some very creative solutions to this problem, and in the area I lived they were well received and worked very well.
It is a weird map. I looked up my area. I live in a pretty white, upper middle class burg. My wife and I had noticed that the makeup of customers at our closest grocery store seemed different than our town. When we looked into it, we quickly saw that huge residential areas to the E and S of us appeared to be underserved in terms of groceries. Yet none of that is shown as green on the map.
To the contrary, a couple of areas to the W and N of me are green, and I KNOW of several grocery stores that are far more convenient to folk in those areas than to the E and S of me.
I don’t understand the map either. It shows my neighborhood as “green,” but there are no food retailers in the neighborhood because it’s a suburban subdivision!
Maybe for your neighborhood, the term “food desert” is appropriate, and is a genuine problem.
But for the map in the OP, it’s a joke.
Here’s why:
I checked a neighborhood I know very well, in a large midwestern city of a million . The map shows a scary-sized rectangular “food desert”…in a solid middle class neighborhood of suburban apartment complexes. Each apartment complex sits on land a quarter mile square, with a swimming pool in the center, and an artificial “lake” (actually it’s a pond, to regulate rainwater, and is required by the city engineering department). There are a couple of roads circling through each complex, and several dozen buildings (one or two storeys) with strips of landscaped greenery between them.Two parking spots in front of each apartment. Each apartment complex takes 10 minutes to walk across, and there are several of them side-by-side. The area was designed for cars…so yeah, walking from the residential areas to the nearest busy street with lots of shopping available is a pain.
But the area is not only a “food” desert—it is a “commercial” desert. It is a residential area with NO businesses with walking distance, but LOTS of stores on the nearest busy street. Nobody will go hungry or have to eat junk food because of a cruel society where overpriced shops take advantage of the helpless poor people. There’s a Walmart, a Dollar Store, and 4 supermarkets on the busy roads that encompass the area.
If you don’t have a car, you will have to plan carefully. Maybe only go shopping once a week, and take a taxi home, filling the trunk with your grocery bags.
But the map is absurd…it shows that neighborhood as marked by a huge green stain, implying that thousands of people are cut off , with no access to basic needs.
Ironically, I live slightly more than a mile from the nearest large supermarket but am not listed as being in a food desert, possibly because there is a food market 3 or so block from me that is fairly cheap but is only as large as a couple of convenience stores.
I say ironic because a mile or so north of me is a green-lit section, which is across the street from a supermarket-sized WalMart Neighborhood Market :smack: