Food Deserts: When There’s No Fresh Food Around

Sometimes when you’re hungry, it’s a lot easier to get a fruit-flavored soda than it is to get an actual real piece of fruit.  That’s the reality for a large number of people living here in New York City. In certain neighborhoods, the only local place to shop for groceries is a bodega that’s loaded with junk food and soda, but no fresh food.

Fresh fruit and vegetables is part of the formula for a sound diet, and yet, it’s hard to feed your family well when you can’t even find healthy food to buy. 

Not coincidentally, the neighborhoods that have the least fresh food available are the same neighborhoods where cases of diet-related health problems like diabetes and obesity are high.  Nationwide, 23 million Americans live in a food desert: they lack dependable access to fresh, healthy and affordable food. Click here for the USDA’s food desert locator.

Food deserts is one of the policy issues thinkers grappled with at the inaugural IACP Regional NY Conference held in February 2011. In this food video, shot during the conference, advocates working on the federal, city, and community level explained how their efforts are helping to alleviate the food access problem:

Sam Kass (White House Assistant Chef /Senior Policy Advisor for Healthy Food Initiatives) is working with Michelle Obama to to help alleviate obesity and increase fresh food access through food policy changes and initiatives like the White House Kitchen Garden and the Let’s Move! campaign.

Dr. Marion Nestle (Paulette Goddard Professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health and Professor of Sociology at New York University) is a writer, educator, and activist working towards a more informed public and a more just food system.

Michael Hurwitz (Director, Greenmarket ) brings farmed goods directly to New York City through over 50 farmers markets, and through the new Fresh Bodegas Initiative,  which is distributing fresh fruits and vegetables directly to bodegas located in food deserts. 

Stacey Murphy (Founder, BK Farmyards) is bringing more fresh food into Crown Heights, Brooklyn through a student-run school farm and farmers market.

Click here for a video about two gardens hoping to teach the value of fresh, locally-grown food: the White House Garden, and the High School For Public Service Youth Farm

Continue the food policy discussion at IACP’s 33rd Annual Conference in Austin, Texas: June 1-4, 2011.  Click here to find out more and to sign up.

Credits- Red Jacket Orchards & Bodega footage: Ben Sinclair / Still photos: BK Farmyards, Greenmarket, Obama Foodorama & the White House / High School for Public Service footage: Michael O’Brien / Food Deserts graphic: Slate