I’m highly skeptical of the “food desert” thing. A couple of years back, I ran across an article about the “food desert” area of the city about 40 miles from me.
It was complete nonsense. There is a large supermarket right smack in the middle of the “food desert.” There are a couple of dollar stores in the same area. They aren’t full-sevice supermarkets, but they do sell basic food staples and some perishables, such as juice and milk.
Not only that, but there is a Wal-Mart a short distance away. Not walking distance, but there is public transportation available. There is a city bus system, including buses equipped for those in wheelchairs.
There are now a couple of small towns near me with no grocery stores, which makes it more difficult for people to get what they need. In each case, other local businesses started selling more food items. Friends, relatives, and neighbors help out people with transportation issues. It’s not an ideal situation but no one has actually starved due to lack of food.
We all help our neighbors out who are disabled, don’t have a working vehicle, etc-as I said in another post, we are watching out for each other. Because the nearest grocery store is about 20 miles away in the nearest town (county seat, less than 900 people) the general store out here-about 7 miles from my gate-started stocking a ton of food items several years ago, and now is pretty much a mini-grocery-okay for a quick trip for a picnic, or as a stop for sandwich stuff for tourists heading to the river for the day-but since they don’t have a good selection of meat, veggies, etc that is about all-but even that is nowhere near a food desert-even a fresh food snob like me can get the stuff for a meal or two in a hurry-no one is going to starve shopping there...
The aforementioned grocery in the nearest “town” is always fully stocked with full-on organic produce, free range meat, all the brands of yogurt, stone ground wholegrain stuff, fancy Colombian and other ground coffee and beans etc, and a full-service deli that caters to the paleo/fresh food crowd, but it does also have a bakery that does cakes, pies, brownies and all that other sugary stuff as well as some starchy stuff-mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, pizzas, and fried chicken and fish for the non-paleo eaters. Definitely not a food desert.
Although there are some fat people out here-mostly women of middle age and younger-almost never a fat older woman-we seem to take much more care of our appearance here-there are noticeably fewer of the heifers than in the nearest small city-6000 people-and way fewer than in SA-which is about 50 miles away-in that city of 1 million +, I swear that every other woman in WalMart is supersized-obviously that is not a food desert-I never go to a store in SA unless my guy drags me to one when I’m visiting his place-everything I need for home or work I can get in one of the small towns out here-Home Depot included-or I can order it online, delivered right to my gate...