Food deserts make healthy eating out of reach

This article is part of a multimedia project that details community initiatives in the Washington D.C. area to combat food deserts, or low income neighborhoods without access to healthy food, as part of graduate capstone class at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Every day in the District of Columbia, nearly one in eight households struggles with hunger as a result of limited access or ability to buy nutritionally adequate food, according to D.C. Hunger Solutions, a non-profit food action organization. They live in areas known as food deserts where people have to travel long distances for access to grocery stores that provide fresh fruits and vegetables. For residents of the District like Ward 8 resident Jewel Sims just getting to the grocery store is a struggle.

“I have to arrange for transportation because I know I’m not getting only one bag of groceries since I have to go so far,” said Sims. “And I don’t know when I’ll get to go again.”

Alix Ashbrook, director of D.C. Hunger Solutions believes the prevalence of food deserts in the district mirrors national trends and creates a ‘poverty tax’ for residents living in those areas.

“You’re putting an additional burden on them because they don’t have somewhere to shop.” Ashbrook said. “People go to the store and they shop for two weeks so they have to pay an informal taxi service costing up to 30 or 40 dollars.”

Food deserts can be either rural or urban, and often the only easily accessible places to buy food are convenience stores with packaged or fatty prepared foods and fast food restaurants with dollar menus. D.C. Hunger Solutions released a report When Healthy Food is Out of Reach showing the relationships between income levels, obesity rates, and number of full-service supermarkets in the area.

This data set is derived from the D.C. Hunger Solutions report When Healthy Food Is Out of Reach. It shows the disparity between wards in their access to grocery stores and how that directly correlates with high rates of obesity and diabetes.

Ward 3 had the highest average household income of $128,000, the most grocery stores (11) and the lowest percentage of overweight or obese residents (42.2). Contrast those numbers with Ward 8, showing an average household income of $29,000, just 3 full-service grocery stores, and 71.5% of residents who were obese or overweight. Ward 3 also has the best store to resident ratio of 1:7343 while Ward 4 only has one store for every 38, 440 residents. Another key finding in the report by D.C. Hunger Solutions shows a direct correlation between high rates of obesity, heart disease, and diabetes and the ratio of community population and number of supermarkets.

A history of hunger

According to Policy Link’s The Grocery Gap: Who Has Access to Healthy Food and Why It Matters beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, white, middleclass families left urban centers for homes in the suburbs, and subsequently supermarkets left with them. Once in the suburbs, grocers adapted their stores to suit their new environments, building ever-larger stores and developing chain-wide contracts with large suppliers and distributors to stock the stores with foods. Over the past several decades, the structure of the grocery industry has changed dramatically, with significant consolidation and growth in discount stores and supercenters. Obesity rates are even lower for those who can afford to shop a more upscale supermarket chains such as Whole Foods and Harris Teeter. Adam Drewnowski, a University of Washington epidemiology professor who studies obesity and social class found that the percentage of food shoppers who are obese is almost 10 times higher at low-cost grocery stores compared with upscale markets.

“If they wanted their diet to be healthy, they went to another supermarket and spent more,” said Drewnowksi.

This issue is also compounded by the fact that low-calorie foods cost more money and take more effort to prepare than processed, high-calorie foods.

“When you have a limited amount of money to feed yourself, you gravitate toward foods which supply the most calories per dollar and leave you feeling fuller,” said Drewnowksi.

East of the river in the most need of rain

The District has approximately one full-service grocery store for every 14,000 residents. But in Wards 4, 5, 7, and 8, which contain low-income areas, the store-to-resident ratio is lower than the District average. In addition, residents of Wards 4 and 7 in particular have considerably fewer square feet of full-service grocery retail space per person than the District average.

Local developer Tim Chapman thinks the city has been supportive in encouraging bringing more supermarkets by providing subsidies and funding to revitalize an area that hasn’t been developing at the same rate as other areas of the district.

“The east of the river community is largely ignored by national retailers, and undeservedly so,” said Chapman. “From an economic development standpoint, Anacostia is ripe with opportunities.”

National outlook on food deserts:

A 2009 study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that 23.5 million people lack access to a supermarket within a mile of their home. A recent multistate study found that low-income census tracts had half as many supermarkets as wealthy tracts. The District alone loses more than $112 million in annual grocery revenues to neighboring jurisdictions because existing grocery retail is insufficient to meet residents’ demand. Not only do food deserts suffer from lack of access to healthy food but communities miss out on the economic and health benefits they bring to neighborhoods. Increasing access to healthy foods is one of four key areas of the Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move initiative. One of the program’s major goals is to close the grocery gap in the next seven years with more than $400 million dollars in federal funding as part of the Healthy Food Financing Initiative. The administration projects this initiative will also create thousands of jobs in urban and rural communities.

“The Healthy Food Financing initiative is the first time federal funds will be appropriated for a food initiative,” said Ashbrook. “It’s a major step in the right direction.”

This program is modeled after Philadelphia started a healthy food financing initiative, which began with a modest federal investment and then leveraged to create an incentive for local businesses to serve in underserved communities. Locally, legislation will be introduced in the coming months that will create a healthy food access initiative on the local level, according to Ashbrook.

“It will assist developers and grocery store operators in securing financing to cover development costs,” Ashrbook said. “It would also flexible funding packages designed to draw more fresh food retailers into underserved areas of the District.”

The hope is to create hundreds of jobs, encourage local entrepreneurs to establish fresh food businesses in the District’s food deserts, and improve the existing food retail options.