GLOBALIZATION TECHNOLOGY & SOCIAL CHANGE
Food Deserts: History, Implications, and Solutions ARGUMENT
http://www.zdnet.com/article/food-desert-a-lazy-explanation-for-obesity-in-poorer-neighborhoods/
A food desert is a low-income census tract where either a substantial number or share of residents has low access to a supermarket or large grocery store. "Low income" tracts are defined as those where at least 20 percent of the people have income at or below the federal poverty levels for family size, or where median family income for the tract is at or below 80 percent of the surrounding area's median family income. Tracts qualify as "low access" tracts if at least 500 persons or 33 percent of their population live more than a mile from a supermarket or large grocery store (for rural census tracts, the distance is more than 10 miles). https://www.fns.usda.gov/tags/food-desert-locator
|
Food deserts have been a hot topic since the 90’s when policy makers and social scientists began to try to understand the relationship between access to healthy, whole foods and public health. A number of studies have resulted which examine the role of the location of a person’s home and how that correlates to various other factors such as disease and school achievement.
|
https://www.active.com/nutrition/articles/are-you-eating-enough-fruits-and-vegetables?page=1
|
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/report-reveals-the-reality-of-childhood-hunger-in-the-us_us_59836e88e4b08b75dcc5d0bb
Inability to access healthy, whole foods has consequences for students. Residing in a food desert has been shown to negatively affect achievement scores in elementary school children (Seth Edward Frndak 2014).The rates of childhood obesity are also increasing (De Onis et al. 2002).
|
Obesity and chronic disease is on the rise in the United States (the epidemiology of obesity, a big picture hruby and hu), and lack of access to adequate nutrition is partially to blame (Indiana University. "Higher rates of diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, stroke in food desert'." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 5 November 2013) <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/11/131105081527.htm>.
|
Food insecurity is also an issue that affects millions of Americans on a daily basis. An estimated 12.3 percent of American households were food insecure at least some time during the year in 2016, meaning they lacked access to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members. (September 2017 Household Food Security in the United States in 2016 by Alisha Coleman-Jensen, Matthew P. Rabbitt, Christian A. Gregory, and Anita Singh) According to a study Hunger on Campus, approximately half of the students surveyed reported being food insecure at some time during the prior 30 days despite the majority of them working at least part time.