If you drive down Figueroa Street in Los Angeles, you’ll notice a car dealership, a music school, Taco Bell, McDonald’s, gas stations, Jack in the Box, and Popeyes.
That’s what Drs. Deborah Cohen, a research scientist at Kaiser Permanente who lives in Los Angeles, is a “food swamp.”
“We live in environments where having bad food is very simple and easy and motivates us,” Cohen said.
What Is a Food Swamp?
The food swamp is a place where there is a “huge following” of unhealthy foods, according to the Los Angeles Food Policy Council. A food swamp can present itself as a neighborhood with many gas stations, liquor stores, corner stores, and farm restaurants but few or no stores to allow. people have access to cheap, healthy food.
A study of sixth- and seventh -grade girls in Baltimore found that participants who lived in a food swamp ate more food and sweets than those who did not live in a food swamp. This may interest you : The diversity business case is being pushed back.
“There’s a lot of bad food,” Cohen said, referring to the United States. “Sodas, chips, cakes, cookies, clothes. It’s a low -fat diet, where you eat a lot of low -healthy foods. “
What Is a Food Desert?
In comparison, a food pantry is an area with little or no affordable health food, according to the U. On the same subject : Researchers develop antimicrobial, plant-based food package designed to replace plastic: Starch-based fibers improve protection and reduce damage.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). While food swamps can fill stores with healthy food, there is usually no food in the desert.
In a 2017 report, the USDA estimated about 19 million Americans lived in a food desert. In these areas, at least 20 percent of people live below or below the poverty line and one in three residents live more than one mile from the nearest store downtown.
A Johns Hopkins study in 2014 found four diets did not equally affect Black communities. In the predominantly black urban villages, there are fewer supermarkets on average. White people in urban areas were numerous.
Why Are Food Swamps and Food Deserts Dangerous?
Lack of access to healthy, cheap food can have dire consequences. This may interest you : Wherever You Can Get Free & Cheap Food on the First Day of Summer.
Four foods have been linked to higher rates of obesity. Being overweight has long been linked to a number of risk factors for diseases such as diabetes and heart disease. . But Dr. Cohen, says desert food is not a big problem.
“The problem is food swamps,” Cohen said. “When it comes to food deserts, I don’t feel that’s an appropriate way to describe the problem because only five percent of the American population lives in what is called the food desert, but 73 percent are now overweight or obese, ”Cohen said.
A study from the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity found that diets are more focused on nutrients than four diets. For example, the use of unhealthy food is a place where there is more food security than there are no grocery stores.
What Can We Do to Minimize Food Deserts and Swamps?
There is not much the public can do to improve their own access to food. Food deserts and wetlands are complex problems that require specialized solutions.
Things like improving public transportation from food parks to grocery stores and forcing stores to open places in food deserts could help, according to experts.
Some communities, such as East Los Angeles and Boyle Heights in Los Angeles, tried to force the corner and liquor stores to add healthy foods, but that did not affect what people decided to buy.
Cohen has other ideas. The National Institutes of Health recently gave him a grant to develop what it calls “prescription diets.”
“We put groceries together and give them to families who like people to eat healthy and manage their weight,” Cohen said. “So we’re trying it now, but when it works, it can be a solution [that] allows us to have a service that just you sign up and get. healthy, cheap food. ”
Beyond that, Cohen believes that only education can be most effective, including education about specific subjects: groups.
“The main problem is people are being served so much,” Cohen said.
When it comes to groups, “we don’t have standards in this country,” Cohen said. “One of the projects I’m working on is building advertising sections. So, when people are in a restaurant, they can order whatever they want, but give it the right amount.
Cohen wants people to remember one thing.
“I want them to feel they’re not wrong,” Cohen said. “They are affected by the food crisis and the lack of a state. And to be able to help people by changing the conditions in which we live. This is really the mission of public health. , to create conditions that will enable people to be healthy.
This story is part of Connect the Dots, our series that shows how different aspects of our lives are connected to each other. Watch the video above to see how the four meals, concerts and light bulbs are connected.
“Food desert” is a commonly used but inappropriate term coined by researchers to describe places with low people’s incomes and low physical access to supermarkets. The term Food Apartheid is more accurately defined as racist and discriminatory practices that create food inequality.
What is an example of a food desert?
The closure of a store in Macon, Georgia, is just one example of the continued development of food in the world today. According to a study by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, nearly 2 million Georgians, including 500,000 children, now live in a food desert.
How many foods are there in America? Locator identifies about 10 percent of the approximately 65,000 registration cards in the United States as food deserts. An estimated 13.5 million people in this census have limited access to healthy food.
What is considered a food desert?
‘Food Deserts’ are geographic locations where you can get cheap and healthy food (called fresh fruits and veggies) with limited or no traffic because you are too far away to shop.
Where are the food deserts in the US?
Twenty percent of rural areas in the U.S. are classified as food deserts. There are small groups in each state in the U.S. that classify four foods in rural areas, but are most prominent in the Midwest. In these counties, about 2.4 million people have low access to a large supermarket.
What are food mirages?
In a food crisis, there are many shops but the prices are higher than what low -income families can afford, comparing jobs to four meals because of a long journey to get them. cheap food, needed in any situation.
What is the 2021 meal? Food insecurity occurs when food is too far away or too expensive to buy. Food desert is one form of food security. When a person lives in a food court, it means the supermarket is more than 1 mile away from downtown or more than 10 miles away back.
What are food deserts and food swamps?
The food court is a place where there are more fast food, junk food stores, convenience stores, and alcohol stores than healthy food. Other than the food desert, the neighborhood has little access to cheap and good food.
What creates a food desert?
All four foods are caused by apartheid food and have root causes in food insecurity, racism, proximity to supermarkets, access to a car, and more. different social.
What is meant by a food desert?
Description of the food desert: a place to find a few new foods to sell Although the food desert is generally considered to be an urban area where food choices are dominated fast and convenient shops, most of Kansas ’food deserts are in rural areas.
What is the opposite of a food desert?
The opposite of a food desert is a place with so much good and healthy food that so much food is wasted. In other words, the opposite of a food desert is that of many other parts of America.
What’s another word for desert food? There’s a new word on the streets these days: food apartheid. Many would argue that it is more appropriate to discuss areas where there are no new farms, grocery stores, and cheap healthy foods like his, than things. eat desert.
What is the difference between a food desert and a food swamp?
In food deserts, disasters are intended to increase access to healthy food, whereas in food swamps, disasters are intended to decrease access or shown in healthy foods.
What causes food swamps?
The environmental food swamps are full of unhealthy foods due to the large number of corner shops and farm shops in it (2).
