Local (and Healthy) Food Should Be For Everyone

Local food is a lot of things.  For one, it is an inherently healthy dietary lifestyle to adopt.

Those who choose to eat local foods produced seasonally are much more likely to consume a greater amount of fresh fruits and vegetables, and tend to eat less processed foods that are often high in calories and saturated fats.

Local food is an economic engine that allows farmers and other producers with access to markets that were not there even ten years ago, and allows consumers to choose to spend their money locally instead of at big box chain stores where revenue is sent to shareholders living outside the community. Thus, buying local food is also a way to invest in the local community.

This is often described as a community multiplier effect. Perhaps most important to many, buying local food is a way to reconnect to our food system. By having a direct relationship with farmers, we are able to put a face on our food and are even able to control (to some degree) how the food we eat is produced. Unfortunately, there is one thing that local food certainly is not: inclusive.

The logistics of the current industrial food system tend to produce inequalities when it comes to who has access to local, and even more importantly, healthy foods. There are three distinguishing characteristics of populations who have unequal access to healthy foods: 1) They live in urban areas; 2) They live in poverty, or are classified as low-income; and 3) They are overwhelmingly African-American.

There have been many studies, including this one (pdf), conducted that analyze the relationship between neighborhood demographics and access to different types of food stores.

This study in particular found, among other conclusions, that:

Compared to the poorest neighborhoods, large numbers of supermarkets and gas stations with convenience stores are located in wealthier neighborhoods.

Regarding neighborhood racial segregation, supermarkets and specialty food stores are more common in racially mixed and predominately white neighborhoods. The greatest difference is in the prevalence of supermarkets, which are 4 times more common in predominately white neighborhoods compared to predominately black neighborhoods.

So what does this tell us about access to local food? Considering the fact that poor, black neighborhoods are four times less likely to have access to supermarkets than wealthier white neighborhoods, we can assume that their access to local food (either through farmers’ markets, CSAs, or other means) is even more restricted.

Places such as the poor, minority neighborhoods described in the report above are known as “food deserts,” or places that have no or distant access to grocery stores. This report analyzes the effect of food deserts on public health in Chicago. (pdf) Not only does it study the distance it takes residents to reach grocery stores, but also takes into account the proximity of fast food restaurants and how this relationship affects public health. They describe this as a Food Balance effect. All of the findings in this report point to one conclusion:

Communities that have no or distant grocery stores, or have an imbalance of healthy food options, will likely have increased premature death and chronic health conditions, holding other influences constant. Although we must set our findings in the context of the challenges and limitations of linking cause and effect and of predicting, with certainty, the exact statistical magnitude of the relationship between food access and health, it is clear that food deserts, especially those with an abundance of fast food options, pose serious health and wellness challenges to the residents who live within them and to the City of Chicago as a whole.

In terms of race:

African-Americans are the most disadvantaged when it comes to balanced food choices, although other racial groups do suffer as well. African-Americans, on average, travel the farthest distance to any type of grocery store, and their low access communities cluster strikingly. Chicago’s food deserts, for the most part, are exclusively African-American.

In a typical African-American block, the nearest grocery store is roughly twice as distant as the nearest fast food restaurant. This means that, for African-Americans, it is much easier to access fast food than other types of food. Following a doctor’s dietary recommendation is likely very difficult for the half million plus African-Americans who live in the 287 worst grocery-store-access tracts.

There is a lot of talk in the sustainable food community about the dietary choices we all make. However, it is important to realize, as the food desert report notes, “while many of us take food options for granted, residents of the food desert often cannot choose between eating an apple instead of a candy bar, a salad instead of french fries, or fresh skinless chicken instead of deep fried, high-fat chicken.”

It is when people are devoid of healthy food choices that the inequalities of our current food system become most apparent.

Thankfully, there are both national and local organizations around the country working to increase access to healthy and local foods for vulnerable populations. For example, Occidental College operates a Center for Food and Justice designed to connect underserved populations with healthy and local food through programs such as the Grocery Accountability Project that encourages, through program and policy development, retail food industries to open supermarkets in low-income neighborhoods. In the Washington, DC area, FRESHFARM Markets participates in the WIC Farmers Market Nutrition Program, Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Program and an EBT/Food Stamps program. All of these are designed to give low-income residents access to farm fresh food that they would otherwise not be able to afford. There are many other programs like these throughout the country too.

Sustainable food must equal just food. When making your next trip to the supermarket, corner store or farmers’ market, please remember to think of (and support) those whose food choices have already been made by their location, race and income level.

(Photo credit: altemark on Flickr.)