Food Scarcity And Inequality Of Access: A Strategic Legal Approach To Community-Facing Services Addressing The Food Dessert Phenomenon
Cory Simmons-Edler
May 2015
Recent studies estimate that 25-30 million Americans live in communities that lack basic access to healthy food retailers, such as supermarkets or grocery stores. The majority of these communities are in urban environments. Within these communities, the cost of the food that is available is typically 3%-37% more than comparable food available in a suburban supermarket. Food scarcity and lack of access is more likely to affect minority communities, even when accounting for differences in income, household wealth, and housing discrimination.
Long-term constrained access to healthy foods is one of the main reasons that minority and low-income populations suffer from greater incidence of diet related health conditions like type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and obesity. For many of these conditions and related health problems, a simple change in diet is the most effective remedy. However, the solution is not so simple as making healthy foods available and affordable in places where they are not. Studies show that factors like education and cultural preferences have more to do with community eating behaviors than simple availability or price. To affect real change, education must be coupled with access.
Taken as a whole, the supermarket industry in America does a pretty good job of feeding people for an affordable price. The industry in this country is mature, and highly competitive, typically operating on very slim margins. Establishing a new supermarket is also very capital intensive, often requiring millions of dollars in investment before becoming profitable. As a result, retailers tend to prefer larger stores, which lend themselves to suburban locations. Urban communities are often overlooked because of the unavailability of space, cost of real estate, higher cost of labor, and higher operational costs associated with increased security.
On the other side, community food scarcity and education initiatives often suffer from a chronic lack of resources, and are dependent either on government or private philanthropy to fund programs. This can make it difficult to implement long-term programs that may only pay social dividends 20 years out. Increasingly nonprofit funding is being tied to performance metrics, and the effectiveness of an organization in fighting a long-term chronic disease and promoting public health may only be measurable longitudinally. Often even well funded nonprofits lack the business expertise and back-end resources necessary to effectively and efficiently run a business.
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