Looking out into the horizon, as far as the eye can see, there is a wasteland. Above the trees and buildings rise giants, shining with colorful faces and neon lights. Among them are the greats: the golden arches of McDonald’s, that friendly face of Wendy’s smiling overhead. To many of us, this is a familiar sight. Stuffed in convenient stores, lining the highway, or gathered in shopping centers, food is all around us. However, for a lot of people, these images of abundance are facades merely masking a serious problem in the country.
Much like the barren wastelands around the world, areas void of even the most basic factors of life, food deserts are areas that lack nutritious sustenance. However, this doesn’t imply the absence of food. Rather, the only food available in these areas is processed or prepackaged items that have been drained of a healthy, fresh quality. These characteristics are typical of most fast food restaurant menus and gas station snack aisles. For those that live in these places, the nearest fresh food is further than a mile away. The Food Empowerment Project (FEP) classifies this as “outside convenient traveling distance” in their report on the topic of food deserts, but for the people who live in them, the problem goes further than an inconvenience.
Unfortunately, the mile of fast-food eateries and corner stores is the landscape of many low-income areas in the United States. The same FEP report shows that people without access to cars are stuck with options high in salt, fat, and sugar. The implications of this become a stark reality when the “consequences of long-term constrained access to healthy foods can be seen as one of the main reasons that ethnic minority and low-income populations suffer from statistically higher rates of obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and other diet-related conditions than the general population”.
Food swamps are also characterized by a high concentration of low-quality food but healthy options are sometimes available in the area. The difference is that low-quality food facilities are far more densely populated, overwhelming or swamping the healthy options. By sheer overwhelming numbers, low-quality food is more readily available and easier to obtain than any of the healthier options in existence, in these areas. According to Healthline, one study found that, on average, food swamps have the ratio of “four unhealthy eating options for every healthy one”. Food swamps also overwhelm impoverished neighborhoods. This map depicts the neighborhoods in and around Atlanta that are either food deserts or food swamps. The neighborhoods featured in this article have “at least a 20 percent poverty rate and…at least a third of residents live a mile from a grocery store”.
There have been efforts in the past to aid these undernourished communities. In 2013, 19.2 tons of produce was delivered to over 15 desert communities by EMS trucks and farmer’s markets have been doing well in the past. However, more must be done to feed our friends and neighbors in these areas and generate a food oasis, not a swamp or a desert. Especially in these times, our health matters now more than ever before.