Michelle Obama has made ‘food deserts’ a part of her campaign against childhood obesity, saying that some people may have to take two or three buses or a taxi to get fresh fruit and veggies. The U.S. Department of Agriculture even has a locator for areas deemed ‘food deserts,’ where there is reportedly a low access to healthy food.
In case you’re wondering, there are specific criteria for how a ‘food desert’ is designated according to the USDA.
To qualify as a “low-income community,” a census tract must have either a poverty rate of 20 percent or higher, or a median family income at or below 80 percent of the area’s median family income; to qualify as a “low-access community,” at least 500 people and/or at least 33 percent of the census tract’s population must live more than one mile from a supermarket or large grocery store — for rural census tracts, the distance is more than 10 miles.
In March 2012, The Nevada Department of Health and Human Services Grants Management Unit implemented a strategic planning process intended to discuss food security in the state. They created a Food Security Steering Committee with four workgroups including Lead Nevada, Feed Nevada, Grow Nevada, and Reach Nevada, were created.
Lead Nevada had two goals that included establishing a state leadership structure for food security and promote a policy agenda to increase food security in Nevada. The first goal is expected to be completed by July 1st with the second goal by January 1st, 2016.
Plans included adoption of an agency policy to improve efficiency, claims, and reduce errors; an Office of Food Security with a Deputy Director and Support Staff in DHHS; a Statewide Food Policy Advisory Council; an evaluation plan to measure progress on increasing food security; and a public awareness campaign.
Feed Nevada’s aim was to focus the organizations participation in each federal nutrition program available to the state. They also wanted to create an actual or virtual “one-stop-shop” system to increase access to food and other services.
All work is expected to be completed by January 1st, 2015. This included an increased participation in in-school meal programs; partnering with Women-Infants-Children and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; replication of effective out of school meal programs; a single, statewide database system; and expanded partnerships linked to a “one-stop-shop.”
Grow Nevada’s focus was simple: increase the number of servings of foods eaten that are produced in Nevada by January 1st, 2015. Milestones for this part of the program included an increased in collection centers; expanded programs and partnerships; a Food System Asset Map and an education and marketing plan.
Finally, Reach Nevada planned to change the way food is bought and shipped. It also planned to create a data base on those using the system that could be shared between other agencies and organizations. The first half of Reach Nevada is expected to be completed by January 1st, 2015, with part two to be completed six months later.
Again the plan includes internal goals like a “one-stop-shop” for agencies to acquire produce; a comprehensive client/community food supply assessment; a comprehensive benefit analysis study of the current state and nonprofit commodity system. Finally, they’ll begin sharing information on people using their services.
All of this is designed to cut ‘food insecurity’ in what the Obama Administration has dubbed ‘food deserts.’ Statistics are an unfortunate thing when it comes to both ‘food insecurity’ and ‘food deserts,’ in Nevada.
In July 2013, Wikipedia showed Nevada with its 110, 622 square miles had a population of 2,790,136 or 25.2 people per square mile. This makes Nevada the ninth least densely populated state in the U.S.
The latest numbers available, from 2009, show that only 10.5 percent of all Nevada residents have an income below the poverty level. The same stat show Nevadan’s with an income below 50% of the poverty level at 4.9 percent.
Also below the national average is Nevada’s adult obesity rate, which stood at 24.5 percent in 2009. Meanwhile, Nevada’s low-income preschool obesity rate is 13.2 percent.
Business aggregator, Manta.com shows that there are 1,559 stores that provide groceries in throughout Nevada. This includes major chain outlets, mom and pop stores, specialty shops and convenience stores.
Furthermore there are 942,147 restaurants throughout the state. This includes fast food restaurants, roadside cafes and five-star dining facilities.
Even the Department of Agriculture in 2010 estimated poorer individuals lived closer to grocery stores than those with higher incomes.
In a report to the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Roland Sturm of the RAND Corporation found no relation between California children and teens whose data he reviewed and the food they ate, their weight and proximity to food establishments within a mile and a half from their home. In a separate study publish in Public Health, Sturm looked at middle school children and saw no relationship between where the students lived and where they ate.
In another study conducted by Helen Lee of the Public Policy Institute of California, Lee gathered data on 8,000 students, including where they lived, went to school and how much they weighed. From there, she established where the students could be getting access to food around their home and even defined neighborhoods based on their economic status.
Dr. Lee found, that poor neighborhoods had nearly twice as many fast food restaurants and convenience stores as wealthier ones, and they had more than three times as many corner stores per square mile. But they also had nearly twice as many supermarkets and large-scale grocers per square mile.
Because of methodological difficulties, the idea of a ‘food desert,’ and ‘food insecurity,’ may be little more than junk science.
For example, some researchers look at neighborhood food outlets but don’t have data on how fat residents are. Others examined small areas, like part of a single city and projected the results on the nation as whole.
Still others had a different problem.
They looked at much bigger areas like ZIP codes, which include people of diverse incomes, making it hard to know what happened in pockets of poverty within those regions. Then some researchers counted only fast food restaurants and large supermarkets, missing small grocers who sold produce, while some tallied food outlets per 1,000 residents, which made densely populated urban areas seem to have fewer places per person to buy food.
In the end, it appears to all come down to data and money as Scott Walchek points out in his article, “The Wealth of Data,” for Jetset Magazine:
“An entire industry is profiting wildly on the market for your data. Massive data brokerage companies… are peering into your personal life, collecting data that is generated from everything you do online and much of what you do in the real world. And by generating billions in sales each year offering “analytical services” on nearly every household in the U.S., they are profiting from all that you do in the connected universe,” he states.
“Moreover,” Walchek adds, “this is just a fraction of the evolving…big-data industry now valued at over $300B a year and employing three million people in the United States alone…”
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