Ask Lemmygrad

Many communities have no grocery stores nearby. Those that are there are often understaffed. Meanwhile, dollar stores and McDonald’s are everywhere. Amerikkkan car culture and Suburbia has concentrated stores often like half an hour outside the city. If you don’t have a car it’s not accessible. Few want to carry a bunch of bags of groceries on a bus for an hour (if they have the transportation infrastructure). Healthy grocery stores like Whole Foods don’t want to go into poor communities because they can get more money from those who can afford the higher prices they want to charge. As these problems disproportionately affect non-white people, some have opted to call it “food apartheid” rather than desert as the latter suggests it’s natural.

I’m no expert, but as a USian who’s heard a bit about it I thought I’d comment. I can’t think of any further reading.

Grocery stores essentially don't exist in large areas of cities (and increasingly in rural areas as well). Instead there are places like CVS and Dollar General that don't sell fresh food at all, they only sell prepackaged processed (overpriced) junk. Since public transportation is very poor here, people who don't live near an actual grocery store don't have many options.

I've learned a decent amount about this in the past. Like others have said, it's about living somewhere without a legitimate grocery store (no fresh produce) within some radius, so the residents just wind up buying junk from the convenience stores. The sinister twist is that they actually have tried interventions where stores with real food are opened up in underserved areas, but they all go under because the residents are so hooked on junk. Furthermore, they have been eating convenience foods for so long that they no longer know how to cook for their families. It's a truly bleak reality.

Yes, these stores sometimes still carry rice and beans, as well as frozen fruits and vegetables. But the options are limited and you have to be extremely disciplined. Here's a blog that suggests that. Spot-checking dollar general, out of 28 pages of frozen items, I saw 6 frozen vegetable options (and 0 fruit options), and these were probably intended to be side dishes. As for rice and beans, Americans don't really eat those because the western diet is crappy. This shows up in epidemiology studies as the "Hispanic Paradox" because Latinos are the only people in America who regularly eat a healthy bedrock of the diet: rice and beans.

Once again, this problem is a baseline crappy western diet teaming up with an undereducated demographic (some spots have < 50% high school graduate population) that is usually working 60 - 80 hours a week to barely make ends meet, combined with a lack of fresh produce availability, and you get food deserts where people are just trying to make it to tomorrow buying the junk in front of them because it's one of the only sources of solace in their lives.

Health consciousness in America is about as equally as low as people's class consciousness and requires a similar sort of de-programing that you need to become a socialist. Recently I started learning about the carcinogenic garbage that they put in commercial soaps and now I'm going to be sticking to more natural stuff from now on.

Basically the grocery stores (like everything) have become extremely monopolistic in most of the country. There's only one or two grocery store companies in most areas and they push everyone else out of business.

Then they seem to maximize profits. They close the locations where they make less money and there's more theft. Pushing everyone to the more profitable stores leaving areas very under served.

Grocery stores, especially small independent ones can ha e pretty slim margins and will have trouble competing on price with the larger stores.

I used to live inbetween the sort of hood part of town and the country club/gated communities side of town. I drove 5 minutes further to not go to the grocery store towards the bad side of town. They make less money at these stores and don't take care of them, don't stock the shelves or do maintenance, people avoid them. They close them down.

Basically you need a car to get to a grocery store outside of a few major cities with good public transit like NYC. American suburban planning makes grocery stores be hard to access for poor people and then profit motives make it worse.

So, I think people are missing some important pieces of the puzzle. First of all the term “food desert” has been accurately explained here: no readily available healthy food options (non junk food/fast food) within a reasonable distance for people without a vehicle or in areas without robust public transit available. This encourages people to take the easy route and eat at Mc Donald’s, shop at convenience stores or the like daily. These food deserts do exist in many, mostly urban, places. BUT I’m not sure it would really make much difference if you plopped down a Whole Foods there.

1. I live in the Midwest in a “large” city with a population in the greater “metropolitan” area over 500,000. Throughout the entire city a person would have to walk (not even drive) no more than 5 minutes, 10 minutes tops in very few areas, to reach a Kroger or Wal-Mart or Target or Whole Foods, etc - there are no food deserts here. I live in an upper middle class neighborhood bordering a wealthy upper class area with 2 grocery stores less than a half mile from my house, a SAM’s Club 1 mile away, and a Wal-mart 1.5 miles away. The vast majority of the patrons at these stores are not, by any stretch of the imagination, poor or uneducated and are fully capable of making wise food choices and have the means to purchase organic vegetables and grass fed beef, etc. all day long. Most of them DON’T. This is not a race, gender, political, or socio economic issue. It’s human nature - junk/fast food is easier. During COVID I decided to take the opportunity to work on myself. I got back in to working out, changed my diet to lower carb (not Keto, more of a Paleo diet or low glycemic index diet), cutting out virtually all junk foods, fast foods, sugars, starchy carbs, etc. Since I was paying attention to food labels and what I was putting into my mouth (and therefore my cart) I started noticing what other people were putting in their carts. Mostly prepackaged junk food. The same kind of crap you can buy at the convenience stores etc. in the food deserts. Bags and bags of chips. “Potatoes”…in a box. Microwave dinners. Frozen pizza. I think you get the idea. This was not, obviously, a controlled, monitored study but I make (most of) my meals fresh from scratch so I shop daily. Sometimes more than once a day. So I have a lot of people watching under my belt over the last 3 years. In my observation only about 10% of people were shopping for similar things I was. Maybe another 15% had a good distribution of healthy and junk food in their carts (nothing wrong with that - just because I cut out junk foods doesn’t mean I think everyone should… I like ice cream and cookies too). The other 75%? Lucky to see even one apple in their carts. Fresh vegetables? Not a chance. They are actively making this decision - they have to walk by/through the produce section to get to the junk food… As a side note, I get most of my meat at half price because they put it on clearance when it is coming up on 3 or so days of the “best by” date. I always have a good selection to choose from. If the food was just priced too high for the store’s clientele then the clearance section should always be empty. But it never is. Just because people have healthy choices does not mean they will make that choice. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying people shouldn’t have a choice. Im just saying that having fresh, healthy foods available isn’t the panacea that a lot of people seem to think it is.

2. Healthy food costs more. My food budget has gone up by 40% since I started eating healthier foods and preparing meals from scratch. Even though I get most of my meats at half price, fresh vegetables, spices, oils, etc. that go into preparing the food are necessary to purchase as well. A typical frozen microwave meal or frozen pizza costs $3.00 to $10.00 depending on the brand and size. Cereal with milk comes out to less than $1.00 per bowl. Cooking fresh, raw, natural foods for myself and my girlfriend starts around $8.00 per plate (generalizing - depends on the meal). So, people with limited funds will still gravitate towards pre-prepared boxed/canned/frozen foods. And, why not? Those products extend their budgets so they can do other things in their lives.

3. Takes longer to prepare. Convenience store food usually just needs to be heated up in a microwave. 5 minutes or less and you can eat! Great! Fast food is an immediate meal. Working long shifts or multiple jobs takes away from food prep and cooking time. Why waste 30 to 60 minutes of your life for every meal when you can be relaxing watching tv or doing something else?

4. And last, but not least - safety. The person on this thread that said they drives 5 minutes out of the way to the better part of town to buy their groceries says it all. This person is part of the “problem” (ironically, as far as they see it) with stores closing because of low sales. If this person avoids the stores in the “bad” part of town, that are closer to their home, then it is reasonable to assume that countless other people do as well, even people that live there. For that matter, why would someone want to work at a store that so many people stay away from due to safety concerns? Why would the “evil” store owners or chains want to keep a store open that people are actively avoiding because they are afraid to go there? I’m not saying that corporations are on the little guy’s side nor denying that they are in it for a profit (of course), but is it reasonable for a retail store to act as a charity and keep stores open that are losing money?? If you think so then perhaps you need to open a store in a food desert.

TLDR: Food deserts exist in many places but it isn’t a one dimensional issue and there is no quick fix to human nature. Also, I miss eating the 3 P’s - pizza, pasta and potatoes. Eating healthy takes time, money and effort. I had to “train” myself to do this and most people don’t have the time, money, nor desire to put forth this effort.