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Food Deserts

When teaching summer school in inner-city Boston last year, across the street from Boston Common, I quickly noticed that equal to the dense number of people was the dense number of fast-food restaurants lining the streets. Subway, Chipotle, Cheeseboy, McDonald's, Dunkin Donuts, and many more all told of Bostonians' need for quick food. At the time, it seemed novel to a man who had to get in his car to drive a mile or more to reach places like these.

It took me longer to notice something equally significant: there were no grocery stores. A few weeks into my time there, I recalled how long it took to travel to Target to get the food and supplies our students and we would need to run the program. We rented a car and traveled to a far-off suburb of Boston, a trip that took twenty minutes or more. It dawned on me then that, in contrast to the number of fast food restaurants around us in the city, there were no grocery stores. In fact, I did not know at the time that I was standing in the middle of what geographers call a food desert, an area where a supermarket is more than half a mile from a resident's home, and therefore difficult to reach and use without a vehicle.* A quick mapquest and Google Maps search reveals that there were a few grocery stores nearby, stores I never saw or did not notice amid the density of businesses and people; but these were small businesses, likely to charge prices higher than what you might find in a supermarket and contain less variety.

At first glance, this contrast between a density of fast food restaurants and a lack of supermarkets may seem to be a non-issue. People without vehicles can still walk to get food. The issue, however, is that the food to which they have access is often more expensive and less healthy than what they can find in a supermarket. Even for families with at least one member fully employed, there may not be enough money to buy food for the month. In short, homes in food deserts are susceptible to food insecurity, defined by the federal government as a situation in which a family did not have enough food to eat at least once in the previous year. Indeed, over 48 million Americans utilize what is called SNAP, the U.S. government's Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, to help feed themselves. The number of food pantries and kitchens have also increased, from "a few hundred" in 1980 to around 50,000 today.*

While we may not see hungry families the way we could have in the past, they exist nonetheless.* With just one major food pantry in my city, I can imagine the difficulty some families here must have in keeping themselves well-fed through the end of a month. There is a food pantry, but it, too, is far away in the downtown area. Happily, there are closer options. A local church hands out food each Saturday, but even this is somewhat far. The situation teaches me two things. First, I learn that I am blessed to have such abundance in my own life, not only in food, but in family and friends, as well. Second, I realize that there are some around me who do not have the same abundance, and while they may seem well-fed, the specter of food haunts them or their families. What, then, can we do? When appropriate, and among other things, we can use our time to volunteer to help feed the hungry; and we can contact local food pantries and other non-profit organizations to find where the greatest need exists, then work with those organizations or others to meet those needs. Thanks for reading.

*McMillan, Tracie. "The New Face of Hunger." National Geographic August 2014: 66-89. Print.

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