Posted on 11/08/2010 4:53:13 AM PST by IbJensen
First Lady Michelle Obama has called on Congress to create a $400 million-a-year program to encourage the establishment of supermarkets in places she calls food deserts.
The situation in these food deserts, as Mrs. Obama describes it, is quite dire indeed. American children are growing fat because their parents cannot get to a supermarketto buy fruits and vegetableswithout undergoing the hardship of boarding a bus or riding a taxi. As a consequence, food-desert-dwelling children are forced to eat fast food and junk procured at chain restaurants and convenience stores.
In a March 10 speech, the first lady painted a sad picture of their plight. Right now, 23.5 million Americans, including 6.5 million kids, live in what we call food desertsthese are areas without a supermarket, she explained. And as a result these families wind up buying their groceries at the local gas station or convenience store, places that offer few, if any, healthy options.
She offered a solution. Lets move to ensure that all families have access to healthy, affordable foods in their community, she said. (W)eve set an ambitious goal here: to eliminate food deserts in America within seven years.
To do that, she said, were creating a Healthy Food Financing Initiative thats going to invest $400 million a yearand leverage hundreds of millions more from the private sectorto bring grocery stores to underserved areas and help places like convenience stores carry healthier options.
Pushing this $400 million food-desert-eradication plan became a standard part of Mrs. Obamas stump speech.
In February, she promoted it in a Philadelphia neighborhood she said had just emerged from a 10-year period without a supermarketthanks to subsidies from the enlightened state government of Pennsylvania.
For 10 years, folks had to buy their groceries at places like convenience stores and gas stations, where usually they dont have a whole lot of fresh food, if any, to choose from, said Mrs. Obama. So that means if a mom wanted to buy a head of lettuce to make a salad in this community, or have some fresh fruit for their kids lunch, that means she would have to get on a bus, navigate public transportation with the big bags of groceries, probably more than one time a week, or, worse yet, pay for a taxicab ride to get some other supermarket in another community, just to feed her kids.
Congress left town for the November election without having approved any fiscal 2011 spending bill. So, as of yet, it is uncertain whether Mrs. Obama will get her $400 million-per-year to subsidize supermarkets in food deserts. The agricultural bill that has been working its way through Congress includes only a $40 million earmark for the program.
But does it deserve a single penny?
In the 2008 farm bill, Congress mandated that the department conduct a $500,000 study of food deserts. The studyAccess to Affordable and Nutritious Food: Measuring and Understanding Food Deserts and Their Consequenceswas published in June 2009.
The report demonstrates that Mrs. Obamas depiction of American food deserts is fatuous at best. Lower-income Americans live closer to supermarkets than higher-income Americans.
Overall, median distance to the nearest supermarket is 0.85 miles, said the Agriculture Department report. Median distance for low-income individuals is about 0.1 of a mile less than for those with higher income, and a greater share of low-income individuals (61.8 percent) have high or medium access to supermarkets than those with higher income (56.1 percent).
There are 23.5 million people who live in low income areas that are more than a mile from the nearest supermarket. But more than half of these people are not low-income, and almost everyone in these areas--93.3 percentdrive their cars to the supermarket. On average, they spend 4.5 minutes more than the typical American traveling to the supermarket.
Area-based measures of access show that 23.5 million people live in low-income areas (areas where more than 40 percent of the population has income at or below 200 percent of federal poverty thresholds) that are more than 1 mile from a supermarket or large grocery store, said the report. However, not all of these 23.5 million people have low income.
If estimates are restricted to consider only low-income people in low-income areas, then 11.5 million people, or 4.1 percent of the total U.S. population, live in low-income areas more than 1 mile from a supermarket or large grocery store, it says. Data on time use and travel mode show that people living in low-income areas with limited access spend significantly more time (19.5 minutes) traveling to a grocery store than the national average (15 minutes).
However, says the report, 93 percent of those who live in low-income areas with limited access traveled to the grocery store in a vehicle they or another household member drove.
Only 0.1 percentone-tenth of one percentof Americans living in low-income areas more than 1 mile from a supermarket took public transit to the store, the report said.
For them, Mrs. Obama would create a new $400 million entitlement.
what needless spending?
If they’d address the real problem, “food deserts” wouldn’t be an issue.
How about the “character deserts”, the “ambition deserts”, and the “Traditional American culture deserts”?
Address those and you solve most, if not all, the symptoms she’s trying to make an issue of.
No funds, starve this scam.
Is she going to force them to PURCHASE & EAT the veggies too?
Ahhhh....maybe another mandate ordering people to buy something they don’t want?
I don't ever remember running to the store to buy apples or bananas or oranges. In fact, they were a treat not a norm.
Life was cereal, meat, potatoes and vegies and MILK!!
Meanwhile, Barry-O’s ethanol policies turn tens of thousands of acres of productive farmland into LITERAL “food deserts”.
Can you spell “insanity”, Shelly? Yeah, I thought you could.
I’m more concerned about Truth Deserts. They are huge and they are growing. The Truth Desert in Washington DC extends up into Maryland, through Delaware, and on into Philadelphia.
And that’s just the one The First Wookie lives in. There are hundreds all around the country.
a kenyan meets a kenyan...
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/11/odd-little-moment-at-the-ceo-meeting.html
because their parents cannot get to a supermarketto buy fruits and vegetableswithout undergoing the hardship of boarding a bus or riding a taxi.
Cry me a friggin river..
What a hardship having to take a probally FREE freakin bus to buy groceries..
Lady you donlt have a clue as to what hardship is. Maybe you should speak with a returning soldier about being in the mountains of Afghanistan with the muslims...
” No funds, starve this scam. “
But it’s for the CHIL-RUN, don’tcha know??
If they are too lazy to walk to the store they are too lazy to cook the food. Fast food solves this work problem. Next she will want them to get J O B S.
because their parents cannot get to a supermarketto buy fruits and vegetableswithout undergoing the hardship of boarding a bus or riding a taxi.
Cry me a friggin river..
What a hardship having to take a probally FREE freakin bus to buy groceries..
Lady you donlt have a clue as to what hardship is. Maybe you should speak with a returning soldier about being in the mountains of Afghanistan with the muslims...
“Food deserts” exist in areas where crime has driven out (legal) business.
Was my first question while reading this. I'm afraid of the answer.
Oh baloney. If they can get to the store to buy groceries, they can buy fruit too. Don’t tell me they live on only fast food.
What a waste of $
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." -- C. S. Lewis
This woman is a complete idiot. Why not just airdrop apples every where??
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.