What is a "food desert"?
A blog entry in yesterday's Huffington Post by Mari Gallagher addresses this urban phenomenon..."A food desert is a geographic area with no, or distant, grocery stores often served by plenty of fast food restaurants." The conversation here is all about access to healthy foods. According to her group's study, a 1/2 million Chicagoans live in a food desert and are more likely to die and suffer prematurely from diet-related diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.
This post obviously has much to do with poverty, hunger and health yet it also hits on points about public land use and betterment of communities. It also points out that not everyone in a food desert is poor, so it's not just a poverty issue, but as usual it would have a more negative impact on low income families without good health insurance.
Read about Food Deserts here
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