An urban food desert is usually a blighted urban area, with plenty of convenience stores, liquor stores and fast food joints, but without access to healthy food like fruits and vegetables. It easy to find cigarettes, alcohol, and processed industrial food-like products, but is devoid of real food. Want tomatoes, whole wheat bread, greens, hormone-free milk, fresh herbs? You won't find them here! Want Twinkies, Pringles, Newport, Budweiser, Snickers? No problem. You have driven through urban food deserts. Maybe you live in one. Some may have a grocery store fairly nearby, but in order to get to it, a person would have to own a car. Or, they may have to take 2 or 3 different buses to get to a grocery store, and carry everything home. This makes them very vulnerable to the corner Twinkie dealer. Imagine this scenario: "Hey, I was hungry, and rather than take 3 buses to get fixings for a healthy dinner, it was easier to fill up on a 39 cent hamburger at McDonald's." Shouldn't good food be accessible to all? What if we all planted vegetable gardens, fruit trees, and edible landscaping in our yards? What if public spaces of apartment complexes had gardening spaces instead of all that grass, and enlisted the help of a Master Gardener to help folks once a week? Is this a dream? Maybe so, but I think it is dream which can become reality. More info: September is Food Desert Awareness month! www.fooddesertmonth.org Time magazine has something to say about urban food deserts: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1900947,00.html by Melissa; comments welcome. |
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What's an urban food desert? |