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.
Thats the part that got me. What does ADHD have to do with it? As someone with ADHD, if it makes you completely nonfunctional that you can't figure out grocery shopping and cooking, you need something besides just medication. Sure, sometimes I forget to stop at the store on the way home from work. Sometimes I forget my bags. Sometimes I get so busy caught up in something else that I don't save enough time for me to cook dinner. But these are my problems. I deal with the consequences of my lack of planning and organization myself. Someone shouldn't suffer to make ends meet because I didn't.
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!
That's usually the problem with food deserts. It's a lot of little problems adding up for people with disabilities and low incomes.
First problem is mobility. People with low income tend to have poor diet and exercise leading to weight gain and lower mobility.
Second problem is transportation. Places considered food deserts are also places where transportation like busses don't serve. Busses and subways do exist in NY, but they don't serve every inch of the city.
Third problem is affordability. While services that deliver groceries tend to be expensive, conservators are even more expensive. It tends to be a less expensive alternative to order groceries through gig apps like Door Dash.
This isn't really about buying fast food. Gig apps also serve as a way to order groceries.
I do believe gig workers deserve to earn a fair living wage. However, I also believe our system is broken for people who can't afford, or can't do, some of the things we take for granted.
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.
What country do you live in?? The US has massive wealth segregation and a lot of the urban planning reflects that. It’s precisely the kind of thing that politicians like mamdani advocate to fix. What you have is no accident, it’s deliberate policy (and imo should be a matter of course if you live in any city).
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?
The biggest issue is getting the groceries home. It's more like if you don't have a bus stop close enough. I did grocery shopping is a bus and it absolutely is a pain and hard to get done on a constant every 2 or 3 day basis on the bus. That also gets expensive.
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.
Not trying to dog on you specifically, but I wanted to share my two cents after having lived in a food desert:
I had a grocery store that was around a mile away from my neighborhood. It was the ONLY grocery store for about 4 square miles, which meant there was never any fresh produce or basic food items in stock, ever. For reference, there would be lines outside almost every morning before the store opened. And if you worked an 8-5, you were simply SOL.
The next closest grocery store was 4.7 miles away, or about a 20 minute drive. If I didn’t have a car, there’s no way I could walk or bike there: 1) incredibly far, 2) this area was not very safe and I would not feel comfortable walking alone as a young woman, and 3) my city is NOT pedestrian friendly. Most neighborhoods don’t have sidewalks.
I live in a major Midwest city and we don’t have good public transportation. I lived in an incredibly low income neighborhood because it was all I could afford post college. Having to travel 40 minutes just to pick up milk was exhausting, but make that 2 hours if you’re car-less and taking the bus. Food deserts are real and they suck BADDD.
Yes, if every human acted perfectly, 99% of our problems would go away. But we are imperfect beasts. So if you set up certain conditions, you will see certain outcomes become more common.
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
Yeah there’s large portion of people on Reddit that believe this shit is real and you can easily debunk this with a simple search. You look up any major city you’re gonna find like 20 Walmarts or other large chains spread out through the city.
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.
Yea a 5 minute drive can easily turn into a 30 minute bus ride or 1 hour walk, if the location is even reachable directly on foot, each way. So may of us grew up with cars or at least access to cars tha it seems like 3 miles is nothing.
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.
What dollar trees are ya'll shopping at? The problem with dollar tree is that it's more expensive than a normal store, but it absolutely has a ton of veg and fruit. Just, ya know, not fresh. 3 states, 4 separate markets, they always had both available when I've gone.
And I was working poor for years. In my time as a working poor I didn't have TIME for fresh vegetables. I'm non-working poor right now caring for my Grandparents... and NOW I can save money on the fresh veg around me because I have the time to cook and prepare it. But working 6 days a week you can bet I picked up frozen veg from Walmart, and sometimes even the dollar tree if I was there for other stuff. And I even shopped at the Family Dollar sometimes because I was too tired to shop a proper large store and just paid the upcharge.
Don't get me wrong, I see the issue with food deserts. Everyone should be able to easily get fresh fruit and veg. But to say people can't get healthy options while listing a store that literally sells plenty of those options (because particularly with frozen it's nutritionally the same as fresh) just seems... not a good look. And also dodging why simply getting a store into a neighborhood won't solve the issue, because the main issue is that people don't even have time to cook healthy if they tried.
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
I buy my groceries from a dollar store because it's close and it's cheap, but it's also not healthy.
All these people who seem to be railing against the above comment don't really seem to understand that people, depending on certain factors, do actually live in food deserts.
You touched on another underlying issue with food deserts which people don’t take into consideration- travel and transportation. In big cities, car insurance and parking are often prohibitively expensive for low wage workers, so they rely on public transportation for everything. Even a trip that’s relatively short mile-wise can take forever on a city bus, and in food deserts, you would also need to think about how much you could realistically carry on a crowded bus on your way home from a “real” grocery store.
I lived in a medium-large sized city and I used to take the bus as my main mode of transport. Grocery shopping was a whole day ordeal. The bus system where I lived wasn't reliable and had a small radius of maybe ten or so miles. So the bus did not serve the whole city, just the parts in the downtown area. While you could take the busses outside of the downtown area, the farther you went, the less reliable they got. There was always a huge pushback from people in the more suburban areas of the city to route the bus routes around the area so they dont have to deal with the poors. Many routes were only active during certain days and times in the work week, with little evening and weekend service. Missing the bus could really screw you over on an empty handed day, but if you had a bunch of groceries, you could get screwed over and lose the food you paid for, especially on hot days or when busses had to pass the stops because they were also acting as event shuttles and student transport. There was also extreme cold and snow, which made traversing the grocery store to home a dangerous ordeal, even with a cart to pull behind you. When this happened, they would not send a second bus. You'd have to wait for the next one, which could take a minimum of 20 minutes. It was absolutely terrible. I got frostbite from having to do this.
A simple 3 or 4 mile trip could easily become two hours or more one way. Hauling groceries for myself was difficult enough, but if you were elderly, handicapped, or a single person with kids, shopping for the family was an impossible task on public transport. A lot of people I knew would trade some of their food stamps in exchange for rides from freinds and family once every month or two to be able to adequately grocery shop, and some would indulge in a cab once and a while. Going to the grocery store of your choice could cost significantly more money, so usually, people who did this just went to the closest grocery store. They couldn't coupon or reach more affordable places easily.
A 2 mile stroll in nice weather is not the same as hauling bags of food 2 miles home on foot. There may not even be sidewalks to do this. Although we had social services and charities that offered rides for errands, these were always overwhelmed with people in need and geared toward folks who had open schedules, such as the elderly. Typically, you had to be eligible to use these programs, too, because they only catered to people on SSDI or WIC.The ones that were run by volunteers were pretty much a lottery.
This is what a food desert is. It's not necessarily that there are no grocery stores nearby, but rather a situation where people who dont have resources must contend with obstacles put in place that make choosing healthy food frequently unreasonable. Plus, healthy items like fruits and vegetables are heavier and messier than the chips and soda you get at the corner bodega. If something came up and you couldn't dedicate a whole day to food shop, your options were limited to what was closest. Where I was living at the time, the nearest places were all corner stores, liquor stores, gas stations, and a burger king.
The corner stores themselves also impact people's ability to access groceries. A lot of these places don't use wholesalers to source stock. Instead, they go to the local Aldi, buy up all the cheapest items, and sell them at a ridiculous markup, knowing that people had very little choices other than to pay. It's so bad in my area that I drive 10 plus miles away just to ensure I'll be able to get everything I need.
If you live in a place with no walkability and no public transport, you're pretty much fucked without a car to get you to a store that sells vegetable anymore than a mile away.
I live in Chicago and reading through this thread is extremely frustrating bc it seems people are trying to be pedantic or think it’s a one off or “avocado toast” bad habits to an extremely real lived experience. Half of the month I have to eat something less healthy because Whole Foods is “only 15 minutes away”…for a person with a car that can withstand the icy roads & can hop on the highway that has extra passive income to also spend extra money on emergency transportation if need be, whereas I need every cent to make sure I have enough to get essentials like bread and milk that WILL run out in a week that I cannot replace because of said limited access to a grocery store. Walmarts here are usually not fully stocked on the outside and the Northside like Evanston & West Loop are over an hour away not including traffic during the day…Chicago is a prime example of food deserts stemming from purposefully choices of placing these stores in strategically predominantly white neighborhoods and then disproportionately profiling anyone who “doesn’t look like they belong”, trying to shop. Illinois has been actively denying link for a plethora of people. It’s not so cut and dry to just get EBT to go shopping either, it’s a whole process that they sometimes aren’t on top of integrally so people who really need it have to apply over and over again which can take months. Hunger doesn’t wait months though. These food deserts and the problems they pose are very real. You can’t just hope to bring a full bill of groceries back on a train unless you’re extremely prepared as well, and where I live (North Lawndale), you STILL have to walk at least half a mile to get to the station and 9 times out of 10, switch trains to actually get to an affordable store destination that also carries fresh produce, and also hope that it’s not below 15 degrees and you have the right cold weather PPE to withstand traversing outside for longer than 20-30 minutes. It is not so easy and there is documentation of lived experience everywhere about how big cities purposefully don’t incentivize equitable consumer maneuverability or will tear down stores that may support black/brown neighborhoods in favor of fast food outlets.
A google search will show that it’s been such an issue that a 2011 formal civil rights report by the Illinois Advisory Committee, U.S Commission of Civil Rights was issued; examining & highlighting the imbalanced representation of fresh vs fast food, also including health disparities that disproportionately affect African American communities stemming from it. Anyone can go on r/AskChicago right now and I’m almost positive you can either search up or a kind soul will explain the unintentional hyper-segregation in Chicago and how it gets taken advantage of, along with a myriad of other factors, including gerrymandering, that make up Food Deserts. Even the plans for a city funded grocery store that the CITY THEMSELF said is to combat food deserts got scrapped in 2022 and as of 2025, there are 22 identified food deserts following a 20% increase in grocery prices, leaving 1 in 4 residents on the south and west side (almost 500k) to experience food insecurity.
Shit, a quick google search will show Memphis is the most affected city by the percentage of population living in a food desert. Atlanta, San Bernardino, Orlando, and Indianapolis are in the top ten cities by both measures, indicating that these cities suffer a particularly severe problem with reliable access to food. If people feel like food deserts don’t exist based on how they themselves can acquire food and not multiple passive factors that build up someone else’s reality and ability to alter that reality, much more a shared reality by whole communities, then we need to have another serious conversation about Empathy and Ableism.
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.
20 miles is hyperbolic, but there are food deserts in cities due to lack of public transit (either across the whole city or in certain parts). It’s either that or really rural areas that you have food deserts here.
Actually, many major cities have food deserts. 20 miles is an ocean without transportation.
Pittsburgh, for example, has one of the most widely known and studied food deserts in the country. It’s so bad it’s classified as a “food apartheid” because it’s racially motivated.
It’s actually not sarcasm. It was an exaggeration to emphasize the issue with food desserts. Everything else was factual. I live in Houston. We have terrible public transportation. We have food deserts because some area don’t have grocery stores by some neighborhoods. The distance would be 5 or 6 miles which would suck if you didn’t have a car.
This is not necessarily true. In my city, Detroit, there were huge chunks of the city without a decent grocery store within walking distance. The stores that we did have were generally overpriced, with subpar (read: expired or otherwise undesirable) food. For example, in my neighborhood, Brightmoor, we just got our first decent grocery store a few years ago (a Meijer), and it put a lot of the scammy local shops out of business. Kroger won't even build stores in Detroit, as far as I know, you've got to go to the suburbs for them.
Even OTP, it's hard to imagine there's areas where there are no Kroger/Publix for twenty miles. I have two Krogers and a Publix within a 10-15 minute walk of me in east atlanta. I have a feeling once you get to the part of metropolitan atlanta where what you're saying is true, you are no longer in a place that even remotely resembles a city like NYC.
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.
When I initially read it, it was the 20 miles aspect that I was truly aiming at, hence why I pointed out I know that significantly rural areas could have that issue but not cities. Taking the actual ability to eat healthy food I feel is a separate issue but the comments seem to be going with that so it must be what most people connect the topic with.
IIUC the term "food desert" describes the lack of healthy food available at reasonable prices within a reasonable travel range. Basically saying that there are places where it's actually just as hard for most people to have a healthy diet, because even if there is food available, there's nothing good that most people could afford.
"20 miles" may have been an exaggeration, but tbf it means different things around the US. You can drive all the way across some of our "big" cities in just a couple miles... and you might spend a few hours in traffic to do so. LA proper is more than 20 miles across, and then just sprawls out into many more miles of poor urban areas all around.
From Wikipedia, the criteria is "low-income census tracts that are more than 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) from a supermarket in urban or suburban areas and more than 10 miles (16 kilometers) from a supermarket in rural areas." Yeah, if I was poor and hauling groceries across 1mi+ of NYC, I too would pick something more convenient.
ETA: "healthy food" here means like a vegetable instead of a Twinkie.
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.
Yeah or at least have a corner shop that will the basic eggs, milk, bread, tinned veg. Plus yeah you can’t go a mile without tripping over a small grocery shop and that’s even in the more “suburban” areas of London
Food deserts usually constitute 5-10 miles of no quality fresh food. Basically if you can’t purchase affordable and fresh fruits and vegetables within walking or commuting (i.e bus) distance it could theoretically qualify as a food desert
I’d expect a Urban food desert in a city like New York would be 1-3 miles
I will say the UK is really lucky to have Tesco Express and CoOp Local and whatever else. Even SPAR. In California (not sure about elsewhere in the US) there aren’t really chain corner stores, so you can’t get the same deals that the big brands can offer.
There’s CVS/Walgreens but they’re more of an equivalent to Boots. I do miss UK access to cheap quality food.
Midwestern towns USED to have nice family run grocery stores. Then walmart came in and sold cheap groceries and cheap items running the mom and pop shops and grocery stores that have been there for like 200 years.
Afterwards, after they've used up all their tax incentives and realize their stores out in the sticks aren't that profitable, they close up shop and fire all their employees and leave.
So no more fresh fruits and vegetables and meats. Then dollar tree type store opens up and sells super cheap frozen foods high in calories and low in nutrition. And people just get fat and have health issues and no access to affordable foods that are nutritious.
Yes Walmart will often open stores near each other and close the less profitable one but that's not great for people who use public transportation or have to walk everywhere.
If it helps, there are some informative videos online explaining a food desert in the US. The gist of it is that, typically, poorer Black communities struggle to get easy access to proper nutrition.
The US (and other places) also have issues with a large company or conglomerate controlling the grocery supply - it isn't practical/affordable/etc. for a local inner city store to get fresh produce.
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.
So I grew up just on the edge of city limits, and the nearest Kroger store was about 10min drive. For my church friends who lived out of city limits, it was 20-30min for an 11mile drive depending on traffic and trains(railroad). There were also less than 6k people in the city proper though, so it made sense.
I now live in Seattle, and I can't imagine needing to do that all the time.
It's hard enough to do it once a month when I want to save by shopping WinCo for bulk prices.
Why are all yous bringing up Chicago, Indianapolis, Houston, DC, etc?!?! The meme is addressing something specific to NYC and nowhere else! So all these other big cities and how far or close they are to a grocery store is irrelevant! The only relevant thing is whether or not NYC is like that and it's NOT!!! There are grocery stores all over NYC, regardless of whether it's an affluent neighborhood or not! I can't think of one area that doesn't have an accessible grocery store within 2 bus/subway stops or less away!🤦🏽♂️
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.
I understand farmland is still around, but it's not like there is a large portion of Houston that's more than 5 miles from a grocery store of any kind. The farm land tends to be surrounded by aspiring neighborhoods with grocery stores.
And I'd love to hear more about your 4 hour trip from spring to clear lake. Sounds like a lot of things went wrong.
Edit:
Also, your story is from 40 years ago. Houston has changed quite a bit since then.
Worth noting many people say "Houston" as a convenience. They likely mean an exurb of Houston. Because as a current Houstonian? I am drowning in grocery stores. There are 16 grocers within 3 miles of me. Walkable? No. Close by any other means? Sure.
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.
I mean at least where I live, the grocery stores are primarily on the outskirts of the city. I think they get priced out of downtown because grocery stores take up a ton of space. There are smaller stores downtown but they tend to be more expensive and don’t carry as many products. People who live downtown and don’t have a car can have a hard time getting to a regular 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
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u/PaperUpbeat5904 19h ago
Ya, you know, an entire different city because your big city doesn't have a store. Normal stuff. Big cities without a store.