Even as funding for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and other food-purchasing assistance programs was slashed, public figures applauded national efforts like the Healthy Food Financing Initiative (HFFI) that sought to increase grocery access. On national and local levels, both liberals and conservatives embrace solutions following those basic principles. The solution to such a simple problem seems equally simple: inform poor folks about better nutrition choices and get more good groceries to them. Thus poor folks had a "basket preference" for processed and fast foods, which in turn made them sicker and more obese. Urban planning tended to stack fast food restaurants near poor neighborhoods more closely than grocers that provided quality foods needed for a balanced diet. The popular thinking was that poor and low-income people tended to be more obese and less healthy both because they had no real knowledge about nutrition and because they lived in areas that were physically far from healthy foods. The buzzword caught on in the early aughts, when researchers truly began teasing out some of the roots of poverty in the obesity epidemic. #A tale in the desert classes how toThe logic on food deserts and how to fix them seems casually sound at first glance, if devoid of supporting evidence. Perhaps, then, it's adequate to look at grocery stores more as agents of gentrification and potential weapons of cultural violence against the poor than as saviors for our country's obesity epidemic. They are correlated with displacement of low-income residents in inner-city areas to low-resource suburban areas-" food hinterlands" where distance and transportation barriers often make nutrition issues worse. Grocery stores and farmers markets, it seems, are common components of gentrification with ambiguous results on increasing food justice. But as the healthier and tastier food options replaced what previously existed, so did whiter and wealthier faces replace the lower and middle-class black and brown faces that had long lived and died there. These two huge stores bookended a long grocery-deficient area and promised to help irrigate the food desert at the heart of Petworth. The new sprawling citadel of a Safeway returned triumphantly in 2014 to a coffee-scented community of swanky condo blocks, cyclists and more young white faces than ever.Ĭlose to the far side of Petworth in neighboring Brightwood, the first Walmart in the District popped up not too long ago, complete with a fancy interior and a robust grocery section. "Artists" moved in, bike lanes and racks showed up beside streets overnight, coffee shops and niche stores sprang from seemingly nowhere. For most residents, this meant traveling to places that were not within close proximity.Īlready on the edge of a burgeoning gentrification movement in 2010, Petworth has since taken off in economic growth and rising property values. who had lived there for years-the neighborhood sits just north of Howard University-were forced to walk, drive or find transit over longer distances to different neighborhoods to buy groceries and other basic needs. In the interim, many residents of the Petworth area in Northwest Washington, D.C. This was the story for years until 2012, when the building was demolished to make way for the construction of a new incarnation of the store. Shopping carts were often broken down and covered in sticky grime. Produce was wilted or soft on good days and spoiled or moldy on bad days. Several floor tiles were broken or missing altogether. Rotten meat regularly rested on refrigerated shelves and the stench spilled into the parking lot.
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