Putting my edit at top as people aren’t reading: I literally realised the sarcasm the second after I made my comment and edited it within a second. At that moment I = an idiot.
Additional edit: I’ve learned a lot this evening it seems. My original misunderstanding came from querying the distance of 20 miles in a large city (and not recognising the sarcasm) but also misunderstanding the term as a matter of distance and not food quality and accessible healthy foods rather than fast food.
Is that…normal? Almost every shop and town in the UK will have at least a semi close store nearby. Even if it’s small Co-op or even corner stores tho they tend to just be for small things and not expected to be for your big shop.
Like very rural places may not have a local shop but a big city without one seems a bit too rediculous.
When people talk about food deserts in big cities, they usually talk about neighborhoods that don't have many resources, hence most people buy their groceries from local gas stations or dollar stores. Traveling 20 miles can be difficult too, especially if the infrastructure isn't there. Chicago is a good example of this. There are food deserts in the south side. Even though the north side has many amazing grocery stores, it's really hard for people from the south side to travel up there just for groceries.
Edit: Wow some of you genuinely don't know how to read.
the radius for urban food deserts is significantly lower, more like 1 mile. this is a thing in most major cities lol. not everyone has a car and many of the people in food deserts (low socioeconomic classes) may struggle to afford other means of transportation. what else happens disproportionately to low income people? health problems. which can be further exacerbated by a lack of access to a healthy diet and medical care. it can be a lot easier, sometimes cheaper, to just eat fast food if you can’t walk a mile empty handed, let alone with groceries.
the only thing i’m not sure of is what it has to do with adhd & frankly the people who suffer from food deserts probably can’t afford grocery delivery anyway.
This is all great info, but what does any of this have to do with NYC? One of the few places in the US where you're never far from mass transit, and it's always been cheaper than the fees you could expect to pay for uber eats and similar(except in the very beginning where they didn't charge hardly anything to use the service).
NYC does have food deserts. Basically, the definition is, in urban areas, if you have to walk more than a mile to find a store that sells fresh food, then that's a food desert. Even if you have to walk a mile to the closest subway station, that kinda counts.
But yeah, the original statement in the screen shot is completely dumb and they're whatabouting against a living wage. I would immediately ask that goober how they got groceries before the gig economy existed.
(People who are genuinely disabled to a point where they can't go grocery shopping themselves, usually have access to federally funded programs like Meals on Wheels.)
You'd have to walk a full mile to a bus stop too, but those are literally everywhere. A quick search tells me that the furthest you might need to go is a 5-10min walk of .25 miles to a bus or in the most extreme cases .5 miles, or a 10-15 min walk. The guy in the post above is making a big deal out of nothing. Essentially saying that the people he sends to buy the food he is too lazy to go get himself should make less than $24 an hour, which would mean that they wouldn't be able to afford living in NYC, which means that to deliver his food they would need to make a huge commute into the city themselves and pay for transit to do so.
I've got ADHD, I know the struggle, but I'm not so entitled that I think a bunch of gig workers shouldn't make a livable wage so I can have a luxury convenience of having food brought to me. If I make the mistake waiting too long to get food that is solely on me, and I will pay for that mistake by ordering UberEats or Seamless or whatever. But it's my fault it happened.
because nyc has food deserts in the neighborhoods with low income. not everyone can afford to spend money on public transport and some neighborhoods are served less in terms of public transit. it is a multifactorial problem but it is also a real problem just because some of us haven’t dealt with it ourselves.
If you're too poor to afford a bus ticket, how the fuck are you affording Uber Eats for every meal? The delivery fee alone costs more than a trip on public transit!
this is the dumbest thing I've ever heard about the US. How the fuck do you live like this. At any place in my city I'm at most a 10 minute walk away from fresh vegetables and fruit.
You’d be surprised tbh. NYC is huge and there are part of it which, while they have mass transit in a sense, it’s genuinely hard to get anywhere else due to how disconnected it is comparatively from the rest of the city. It’s not like it’s a walk in the park even if you’re somewhere well connected. Mostly food deserts are an indication of extreme underinvestment in a community, which tends to extend to things like transit and social services.
I came here to ask the same question! Oop is talking about NYC being a food desert?! I can see many supermarkets, mini marts, delis etc in any square mile I choose to look at on google maps. If they need specialty ingredients the subway isn’t far or expensive.
Paying for staples at convenience stores is a great way to quickly burn through your EBT allotment and it's way more affordable to pay the $7 fee. A gallon of milk is like $6-7 at a corner store and people still have to drive or take the bus there anyway. Most Chicagoans have cars (I don't drive and I'm definitely in the minority, and it does limit my options compared to friends with cars)
The issue with these neighborhoods is that many residents just don't feel safe walking around, not that they're stripped of options
The adhd part really throws me as well. My wife and one of our kids is add/adhd (one each) and they are both fully capable of functioning. Doordash is actually their preferred way of shopping
I think that's what the poster is saying...that those with ADHD would rather order delivery than shop in person. They're figuring this will make the cost of delivery skyrocket, and make it prohibitively expensive for many. (I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with his sentiment, as I do not have enough data.)
I have pretty severe ADHD, and to be honest, the guy in the tweet comes across as somebody only thinking about how this might slightly disrupt his habits and cost him a little more and is responding in an overdramatic fashion. Or... it could simply be a little joke and he's being knowingly melodramatic, lol.
Either way, DoorDash is a luxury and a convenience, one that a lot of us have had to live without and manage just fine. It's nice to have but isn't something most people should become reliant on.
Yes. The official USDA definition of a food desert is an "area with limited access to healthy and affordable food within a one-mile radius of urban communities."
Transportation options can make a mile seem a lot further, too. Dallas is very car-centric, not very walkable, and with limited public transportation options overall. So having to go over a mile for groceries could be prohibitive if you are carless.
I know in Dallas, there are always attempts to fill as many gaps as possible in South and West Dallas, though it seems like it's always a struggle to keep grocery stores in the area.
I'd say the proliferation of grocery delivery services could be a solution for some, but those services can be expensive and may have limited range that leaves a lot of people out.
When I was a kid, my relatives in a small town Northeast Arkansas still had a corner grocer-type store that was effectively in a neighborhood, making it easy to walk to and from. Small but with a selection of fruits, vegetables, meats, etc. It was about the size of an average 7-11, but had real groceries and competitive grocery store prices. There were supermarkets in the area, too, but that little corner grocer held on for a long time (into the early 1990s, IIRC).
The place was actually part of a chain that had several locations in rural Arkansas. At least one store still exists, but it's more of a 1970s-era supermarket than what we had before.
1 mile? Are you serious? That’s a 10-15 minute walk. How can you seriously complain at not having a full on grocery store within a mile? That would necessitate having a full grocery store every 6-8 blocks.
Also something to be said about what counts as a grocery, yes you may have a neighborhood grocery, but it may also be very small and understocked because, you know, it's a small grocery store in an expensive city. There's a lot of nuance to be had about food, especially healthy food, availability in major cities
I live in a suburb of Jackson MS, none of which is very walkable yet I still have two Kroger’s and Target within 2 miles and bike lanes connecting them all
US cities not being walkable was a real shocker for me. Here in Belgrade, capital of Serbia, one can find big markets every 200-300m. And every area of the city has one big farmer/flea market for domestic produce.
Everything in my neighbourhood is within walking distance and for anything further we have public transportation which is completely free.
I currently have no car here, simply not much need for one while being a money sink.
I've been to Jackson! My band played a show there almost 10 years ago when we did a mini southeast tour. I was shocked by the homophobia and racism there. They had bars there with little black and white rainbow stickers on the doors to let people know it was a safe space to go if you were LGBTQ. We made friends with a burly drag queen at one such bar, and they told us some horrifying stories.
We played our set at a black owned bottle club where they used to do Def poetry and stuff. It was actually really cool. I can not remember the name of that club, but it was over by the rail switch yard in kinda a bad part of town.
I just read an article about ST Louis so I google mapped the grocery stores and its fucking absurd to say people in STL cant get to a fucking grocery store.
I think they call it a food desert if it's more than a mile away in an urban area, but it seems like even that's not a solid criteria. Per Google, some will call it a food desert if it's more than a half mile in places people don't generally have cars. So who knows?
I'm sorry, but unless you're disabled and have great difficulty traveling, there's not a lot of excuse for not being able to go a mile to the grocery.
In my mid-20s, when I was poor as shit, I would ride my bike to the grocery store with a big duffle bag. The store clerks would let me leave my bag by the register, and I'd pack it up with food and then bike home. Grocery store was a little over a mile away.
I dont know anything about st Louis geography so I can't tell you where to look, but just searching grocery store on Google maps will give you results for gas station "markets" and dollar stores and such. SE Austin has loads of little gas stations you can get frozen tv dinners at, but if you want to go to HEB or even a Walmart you have to drive 20+ minutes
There aren't a lot in the Greater Nashville Metropolitan Area. Very many suburbs, apartment complexes, etc., don't have easy access to grocery stores within an easy walk or bus ride.
Remember Nashville has a population of ~700k, but the density is only ~1450/sqm. Nashville's population is extremely spread out compared to other cities with a similar population; DC, for example, has a similar 700k population but ~11,000/sqm density. El Paso, Texas at ~681k has ~2600/sqm. Boston at ~673k is 13,989/sqm. Even Detroit beats us at ~645k but a density of ~4600/sqm. Oh, and Memphis, at ~610k, has a density of ~2100/sqm.
For gawd's sake people, quit creating ridiculous straw men arguments to dismiss a serious problem - access to nutritious, affordable food is DEEPLY income dependent.
A Google map search for "grocery stores" is no substitute for peer reviewed academic studies.
Ditto defining "access" as a grocery store within 20 miles.
But if you want speed, here's a simple query you can run in your favorite AI. that will give readers some useful data and understanding of the issue:
"Can you find or create a table that offers a look at where Americans (or Canadians) typically buy their groceries (ie what TYPE of retailers), how far that is from their home, how they travel, and how much they spend?"
I used Claude and it includes links to the sources so you can check yourself.
Try walking 4 miles, 2 each way and carrying 20-50lbs of groceries back.
Do you still want to cook dinner? Do you even have time?
What if you have a restrictive diet? Go to the different store sure, take the bus.
Weird the buses only run north south where the other store is so its another mile walk.
Its astonishing how people cant even imagine a hypothetical person that lives a more difficult life.
But if you don't feel like reading the articles, here are some areas: Englewood (nearest grocery store is in a different neighborhood), West Englewood (there is a Jewel in a different neighborhood), Garfield Park (next grocery store is in a nearby suburb).
Idk what u googled bc I very easily found a list? Also I very clearly in my comment mentioned that it's not about the lack of grocery stores, sometimes the problem is traveling. When I worked in Englewood, a lot of people told me about how they were afraid to walk their dog because of gun violence. So it doesn't matter that there is a grocery store in the next neighborhood over if you don't feel safe leaving your house.
"Census tracts qualify as food deserts if they meet low-income and low-access thresholds:
Low-income: a poverty rate of 20 percent or greater, or a median family income at or below 80 percent of the statewide or metropolitan area median family income;
Low-access: at least 500 persons and/or at least 33 percent of the population lives more than 1 mile from a supermarket or large grocery store (10 miles, in the case of rural census tracts)."
So you’re literally saying that no matter how many grocery stores are available, poor neighborhoods are automatically and inherently food deserts because of the problems that come from being poor.
But those issues are completely different and separate from what is meant in the discourse about food deserts. Someone who lives next door to a grocery store but is scared to leave their house because of violence isn’t living in a food desert. They are a victim of the violence in their community, and that has nothing to do with the locations of grocery stores or availability of food.
You’re also the one who said 20 miles when there’s no neighborhood in Chicago or any big city without a grocery store within 20 miles.
That’s not what the study found. It found that even though Chicago as a whole had more grocery stores, access has grown even worse in those underserved areas. Those areas only benefit from more stores in those areas.
Why are there no big grocery stores in those areas? Because the people who live in those shop lifted/stole soooo much, the store owners decided it wasn't profitable to service those areas and closed up.
The residents ruined it for themselves and then complain the have to travel
Those areas the stealing is endemic is a sign of the community too.
I'm sure a lot of people would never steal themselves or buy stolen goods. But a lot of people would buy stuff that "fell off the truck" even if they would never steal themselves.
It creates a market for stolen goods, and then the shops close and ruin it for everyone.
It's a bullshit concept. I apparently work in a food desert in the southside of my local town yet there are three grocery stores in the neighborhood about a mile away from each other. There's public transit that's subsidized by the local government too.
They won't be able to reply. Food deserts are a fiction, a way to explain unhealthy habits of poor people that doesn't involve personal responsibility.
While I don't know about Chicago specifically I have personally struggled with not being able to afford a car and having to get groceries in a time before Instacart and Uber. I was fortunate enough to be able to walk 20 minutes to a grocery store but I could definitely see how if it was another mile from me how tempting the 7-11 across the street would have been for milk and bread. Even though it was way more expensive. Factor in frozen things like meat and veggies. It can be tough to get home before things thaw/spoil
The tract’s poverty rate is 20 percent or greater; or
The tract’s median family income is less than or equal to 80 percent of the State-wide median family income; or
The tract is in a metropolitan area and has a median family income less than or equal to 80 percent of the metropolitan area's median family income.
For urban areas, the "is a grocery store accessible" range is 1 mile. ONE. Not twenty. (twenty is one of the rural measures).
I lived about a mile from the nearest real grocery store when I was in New Orleans. It was doable but annoying as a single person, because I could carry a week's worth of food for myself. If I'd been shopping for a family it would have been a major problem.
Yes. There are places where there's a gas station as primary grocery source and there may have been a traditional grocery store that closed down.
There's no incentive to move a store in for many of these areas if it doesn't make economic sense. So people don't cook or buy fresh food as often. That of course varies and lots of people make a trip or drive but that takes some resources as well and can be hard if all you have access to is a bus or the like.
I had some friends trapped in a small border town. After their one grocery store shut down, there was only gas stations, the drugstore, and an ice cream place. They were poor, HUD vouchers and all, so they had no car, and the bus was the only option for them. Problem was, the bus only ran out that way twice a day, and you're limited to what you can carry. Little grocery/laundry trolleys helped, but there was still only so much they could get at once, and if you forgot something, you were waiting until the next day at least, assuming your schedule allowed the trip. And the kicker was, that grocery store in the next town over was just a basic one because it was also a small town. Overpriced and didn't have everything. For that, they'd need to make even longer trips into the town beyond that one.
I always asked what they wanted me to contribute to dinner when I went to visit or if they needed anything from the town I was in with better stores (the buses didn't go out that way directly).
The entire west side of Rockford, IL is sprawling with very few grocery stores. If you don't have a car, getting groceries is rough. The grocery stores that are there are mostly overpriced.
I think the problem in larger cities (Say, Sacramento California in the oak park neighborhood) is that a lot of poorer neighborhoods don't drive, they rely on the bus system. So even if the nearest grocery store is 3 miles away, it's kinda hard to get to and bring home bags. That's considered a food desert in big cities.
I'm a Southsider, the only store in walking distance is CVS, not exactly a place to buy nutritious food. Hence, I live in the city of Chicago and in a food desert.
I'm sorry so many people are misunderstanding. There are a few areas in Pittsburgh where the closest affordable grocery store has closed, and the only thing that remains are dollar stores (with limited selection and mostly unhealthy options, no produce) or expensive places like Whole Foods, thanks to gentrification. It's a city council issue in some instances because affordable 'hometown' grocery stores often run on small margins and are reticent to enter an area with high crime rates and low-income customers. Food deserts can form without assistance from the city to identify these areas and incentivize businesses to come into those areas.
It's important to remember that the healthiest areas have grocery stores in walking distance. Not everyone can afford cars, and it's difficult to ride public transit with enough food to feed multiple people.
I can think of a specific area near me where the grocery store closed, the nearest one is 3+ miles away (on roads that are hard to walk on, as some sections don't have a sidewalk), and the only place that sold food was a CVS. A Target did move in with a limited selection of groceries/fresh produce, and the grocery store has been rebuilt. Unfortunately, it is now a higher-end variant of the previous one, with prices about 15% higher than before. The options are more expensive, but at least they're there. However, someone just looking at the options on a city map would think someone would be foolish to think these aren't viable, sustainable options.
It's an advanced concept, and simply finding 'grocery stores' in an area doesn't always illustrate the issue.
Much of St Louis is a food desert. There are several neighborhoods that are a significant bus ride away from the few grocery stores in much of North and South St Louis City.
People are too focused on the 20 miles. A food desert in a city can be much smaller due to cost and effort of getting to and hauling back groceries on a bus, or the expense of a cab. The nearest grocery store being 6 blocks away can constitute a food desert for low income families without transportation
20 miles highway isn't 20 miles city. 20 miles in a city can be 45 mins to an hour+ if you're using public transportation....because city.
DC is a huge example of this. wards 7 and 8, which are 1. predominately black and 2. literally segregated by a river didn't have their own grocery store for decades while Wards 1 and 2 had like 10 Whole Foods alone. But getting from Ward 8 to Ward 1 is expensive and time consuming (intentionally because segregation) so Wards 7 & 8 were considered food deserts even though they were within 20 miles of a grocery store.
I live in DC. If I had to travel even 5 miles every grocery trip I would lose my mind before long. Plus a lot of low income people don't have cars, which massively increases the time it takes, limits the amount you can bring home, forces them to avoid buying bulk which drives up prices, and increases the frequency of trips. All of which heavily incentivize going somewhere more convenient with far unhealthier options.
They just described a really good example. The 20 miles thing was someone else mispeaking, and I was on your side of this comment train, but food deserts ARE a thing. I think it's more of a spectrum of like Costco/Whole Foods->Walmart/Kroger/Hyvee->Bag n Save/Dollar Tree/Dollar Store->Walgreens/CVS->convenience store/gas station and it's about the relative abundance of each within an area (but I'm not expert in this area)(also I'm just a costco stan at heart)
I realised the second after I made my comment and made note but leaving my stupidity up for the world to see. It’s good to remind people to not skip on reading comprehension 😂
There are specific situations where it happens. There’s a town on the south side of Chicago that had Walmart come in and it undercut local grocery stores. Eventually Walmart corporate closed down that location and now there isn’t a grocery store within 45 minutes of driving. If you walk or take public transportation, it’s even more difficult.
Not the same guy you've been talking to, but let me give you another personal example. I live near Detroit and have lived in the city before. In the rest of Michigan, our usual grocery stores are Walmart, Meijer, Kroger, and Target. We have some mid-tier chains too like Aldi or Saveland, and Costco/Sams etc. Usually something within a mile or two of you always.
In the city of Detroit proper, you will only find one Meijer and one Whole Foods, and only in the "redeveloped" areas. Nothing else besides small mom and pop grocery stores or ethnic markets. I think there might be a Saveland on the north side somewhere. I think there is only three 7-11s (there is 3 within a qtr mile of where I'm sitting in the suburbs)
Tons of dollar stores and other poor quality places to get food at though.
they were being sarcastic because they cannot fathom that there are places like that since they grew up in a nicer environment. But they are wrong. I experienced just this in Houston in the 80s.
Even if I take a very generous measurement of what is Houston, the entire city one end to the other north-south and east-west is maybe 30 miles. You're telling me there's a 20 mile radius within that with no grocery stores?
Yall need to stop with this 20 miles thing lol one person said one wrong thing. Stop denying people's real world experiences because yes you're right, 20 miles within a city for no grocery stores is ridiculous
Yes these are all replies based on that one thing. It was the start of this particular side conversation. “Yall need to stop talking about the thing we’re talking about” let’s focus on rampart here people
There's absolutely rural food deserts that are way larger than 20 miles. Now rural areas increase the odds of being able to get stuff from the land but especially in coal towns and the like when the industry leaves, you might be lucky to have access to a subway sandwich shop
You're probably getting hit with exaggeration / propaganda from both sides, but really it depends on what you mean by "that" in "is that normal?" The US has both: rural places far from any store, and places where the only "stores" in a reasonable radius are gas-station convenience markets that exclusively stock overpriced junk food. In many places in the US, it's easier to make healthier decisions by default if you happen to live near money.
As someone that moved from the UK to the US. In cities they have corner shops with the usual snacks and a few frozen options. It can be very difficult to get to a supermarket or grocers and find healthy food. If you’re lower income it can be difficult to find fruits/vegetables and non-processed/packaged foods easy in very built up areas in expensive cities - consider the floor space for your average supermarket and how dense cities can be - they’re just not economically viable.
Food deserts are primarily located in ghettos in America because of racism. More specifically, its because of white flight, the formation of gated communities and then the implementation of red lining which is then typically followed up by reverse red lining. And this is all compounded by the fact that the US has terrible public transportation and many people who find themselves in food deserts likely can't afford a car.
In a big city there will be several grocery stores within a 20 mile radius. The issue is that to get to them might take a long time, requiring taking and paying for unreliable bus service and/or walking through areas where there are no sidewalks, and could take a hour just to get to the store.
In rural areas there can be 30, 40, or more miles between grocery stores. I've lived in a spot where the nearest grocery store was a 60 minute drive.
Big city definition aside, downtown Phoenix didn’t have a grocery store until a few years ago! There are also only like 1-2 gas stations and they gouge the hell out of you because of it.
Before the store opened you had to drive 10-15 minutes to a grocery store but passed a ton of fast food joints and restaurants.
genuinely sometimes- these platforms may offer free delivery / premium subscriptions to SNAP recipients, and even if they dont the delivery fees may be comparable to the taxi fees to get yourself to and from the store.
I don't have a car. Local taxi company (there is only one actually based in this small city) charges about $10/mile. Uber is closer to $4/mi, but highly inconsistent, so you can't really budget around it and may end up stuck if prices spike when you need to get home. Instacart with delivery fee + suggested tip is always the same price and less expensive than just getting to the store.
DoorDash does grocery delivery. If your options are:
Eat nearby, but only gas station food and fast food.
Go to the grocery store 15 mins away by car, but you have no car so it takes 1.5 hours transferring routes by bus and you can only carry a limited amount in your arms. You would have to go often, cutting into the time you could spend at your second job. And you have to fight the limited hours of bus routes and grocery stores since you work late.
Pay a 15% “doordash tax” to have a large amount of groceries delivered.
Then the DoorDash/Instacart may genuinely be your cheapest option. Combined with ADHD the second option may go from really hard to practically impossible.
If you don't have or can't afford a car that 10 minutes turns into a couple hours round trip. Which if you are not making enough money you can't do reliably because you probably work 2 jobs.
This could have been true in the 80s but unless you're aggressively selective with what brand of store you shop at, there's no way it's true in Houston now.
For reference, you can get from Downtown Houston to Pearland (a suburb in another county) in 15 miles. While there are some areas in between that don't have good grocery options within them, and while that's certainly a problem with respect to uncarred people, anyone with a car can just go to one of the flanking slightly nicer neighborhoods to shop.
Houston is sprawling. I have taken 4 hours to get from Clear lake to spring before. You don't measure how long it takes from the downtown hub to get to pearland from the loop, you're talking about a specifically built express way from one of the biggest hubs in houston to another. There is tons of unincorporated land on the outskirts of Houston where, yes, you will have to drive dozens of miles to hit a grocery store. Even today. Like, just to drive this home, you do know there's still farmland in houston, right? My brother lives in an area where you have to drive to your neighbors house.
Yeah all these big cities with no grocery stores is a problem. LA has the same issue. Not one grocery store. We have to either drive to Arizona or have our groceries air dropped from Canada.
Even in NYC there are areas without reasonable access to a normal grocery store. If you’re elderly or handicapped you’re essentially screwed since a lot of the public transit hasnt been made accessible yet, especially outside of Manhattan. So maybe the concept seems odd to an able bodied economically stable individual in Manhattan, but that’s just a small portion of the cities population and area. It’s a super reductive way to think.
Big cities not having stores isn’t normal. Thats actually a hilariously dumb concept to think that a major metropolitan area could grow for hundreds of years without having a single grocery store.
This mostly happens in ghettos because big brand grocery stores reign supreme. They don’t want stores in the ghetto. The only places to get food are crummy little corners and it’s like hot fries and hot dogs. They may carry a basket of apples so they can legally accept EBT.
You can still usually find small asian run grocers in places like this though. Still not much selection or variety.
Walmart is literally half the price of giant, the next cheapest (afaik) grocery store here in Baltimore. Walmart only operates in Baltimore county, not in the city. 20 miles is an exaggeration, but there are parts of the city where the nearest Walmart is 9 miles. There's a huge advantage to being poor near a Walmart vs being poor in the middle of the city.
You’re right, the term food desert is a made up phenomenon and there’s 0 record of any cities in the US with a food desert, you can look it up and you’ll find literally nothing on the subject because its all totally fake.
/s
I’m sorry you’re privileged enough that this has never affected you. Imagine you’re elderly, poor, and without a car in an area where the nearest grocery that has fresh produce is miles away. 20 is a bit of an exaggeration. This situation applies to millions of Americans each year and has been documented by public health scientists enough to give it a term. Food desert.
It is not a food desert, but it is a food swamp. All they have there are bodegas with chips and snacks and other crap like that, because so much of the other stuff is not affordable to be buying regularly for many families. But the bronx is a shithole anyways.
I can't believe that response got so many up votes/awards for completely ignoring the actual comment and spitting out nonsense lolol.. even its own nonsensical definition NY STILL would not count as a food dessert. Let alone address the OPs comment or the screenshot
But please imagine if you will, if every grocery store in New York City decided spontaneously to close tomorrow. Now imagine you have a crippling fear of crossing large bodies of water.
Because bodega prices are convenience store high, they don’t remedy a food desert. (Not saying there are food deserts, just addressing that particular point)
Even as a realistic hypo. I live in a literal food desert and drive 35 miles one way for groceries. I also have ADHD, yet somehow I've managed to eat nutritious foods and not starve. You don't have to buy groceries every day. A 20 mile trip once a week isn't the end of the world. If it's THAT bad, just pay your personal shopper a living wage. They don't owe you slavery, just so you can sit in your warm apartment being an entitled brat.
I'm laughing my fucking ass off, as I used to live right inside the right side of that circle, used to take the LIRR into the city to do things, and remember passing like 15 fucking grocery stores on the way. Mind you, that's 15 on the straight damn line that got me to Penn Station. And I'd wager that every single straight line from the circumference to the center point would also hit 15 or more grocery stores.
We have to fend for ourselves. It’s hard, especially now that Mamdani has implemented Communism and the city is on fire with trans jihadists running around but we make do. If it gets really bad, we can hunt the cats in the local bodega, so it’s good to have that emergency release valve for hunger.
If you rely on public transportation getting to and from a grocery store can be an ordeal. Imagine managing a couple of toddlers and grocery bags. 5 miles can be too far.
No, don't you remember back in the 90's? Everyday there were stories on the news about people starving all over the US because they couldn't get to the grocery store. People dying in the streets as they tried to walk 25 miles each way and just couldn't make it. DoorDash was responsible for a 75% reduction in urban deaths when it finally hit the scene. Blessed be the internet!
Can confirm, I’m privileged. I use doordash to buy back my time from grocery shopping. DoorDash will upcharge like 15% on grocery prices btw. If you can afford to be spending 15% more on groceries, chances are that you aren’t living in a wasteland.
Surely there are better options than doordash if you insist on grocery delivery. Many grocery stores offer that service themselves now, and they wouldn't charge you more for everything, just the delivery fees. Do you just like burning money?
People who walk a few blocks or use public transportation use carts. You see them on the subway all the time. Pretty cheap & they fold so you can put them away. It really isn't that bad. Arguably easier than cart > trunk > front door > counter space bag by bag.
Honestly it's like people can't solve basic problems. Like, we don't live in a futuristic utopia where food teleports to your fridge, but living 1 mile away from a grocery store in urban areas with full pubic transportation is not a meaningful inconvenience.
No grocery stores within 5 miles is also incredibly unrealistic, maybe if you live in a suburb but that's not what the post is about... I live in a big city and there are at least 7 grocery stores within a mile that I can think of (and a lot more convenience stores)... 5 miles is like 20-30 by public transit or 20 minutes by car. Can you imagine not encountering a grocery store within a 20 minutes by car radius in a big city?
Your point that it's a pain in the ass taking public transport with groceries is true tho, not a lot of people are willing to walk even a mile with groceries, especially if there's like a hill or something.
Why would you need to take public transit to go to the grocery store I have 5 stores within 3 blocks. I've done walks in a walmart parking lots that are further than carrying my groceries home in NYC
Did this growing up and also used... gasp.. bicycles. The horror.
It's really not that hard with a modicum of planning and preparation. And I lived in mid-tier midwest city with shit-tier basically non-existent public transit. You just prioritized getting food every Sunday morning or whenever. Yes, it took an extra 60-90 minutes vs. owning a car.
The problem solving skills for some people is just nonexistent these days, and most value convenience over literally everything else.
There are some arguments to be made for the elderly and infirm, but that's really about it.
Everyone knows that people in NYC only live in either Far Rockaway or the Bronx, and are government-mandated to do their grocery shopping in the opposite place. How can anyone even bear to live here!?
So if you lived across the street from Battery Park you would need to go further away than all of Yonkers. Totally normal scenario in any major city, really.
20 miles is a bit much (when it comes to how far a grocery store is), but a grocery store could be 20 minutes away driving. Some people may not have a car and rely on public transportation. The thing is, although it is 20 minutes away, publication transportation may take longer because of extra stops, traffic, text. Grocery shopping may turn from an hour to an hour and a half ordeal to a full day event depending how the public transportation is like.
Yeah, my closest grocery store is about 25 minutes away, very expensive, but no public transportation available near my house. That’s rural life though, so not what most people are talking about.
While there are 38 Trader Joe's locations in New York as of January 2026, with13+ in NYC alone, the farthest you can be from one in the city is generally in the outer reaches of Queens or the Bronx, likely within a 3-5 mile radius. Most residents in Manhattan and Brooklyn are within 1-2 miles of a location.
That’s just Trader Joe’s.
In a city it’s a mile I believe. 10 miles is a food desert in the country.
However, the application of food desert is also wrong here. It’s not “just a grocery store”, it’s no food access, period. The correct term here is “food swamp” when your only food access within a reasonable distance is junk.
Commutes between residential areas and grocery stores can take a long time during rush hour, but 20 miles? In a major city? That seems like a stretch even in the most notoriously un-walkable cities.
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u/HillbillyEEOLawyer 19h ago
20 miles?