Promising Strategies to Improve Access to Fresh, Healthy Food and ...

PolicyLink• In the Mississippi Delta, over 70 percent ofhouseholds eligible to receive food stampbenefits needed to travel more than 30 miles toreach a large grocery store or supermarket. 28• In New Mexico, rural residents have access tofewer grocery stores than urban residents,pay more for comparable items, and have a lessdiverse selection of items. 29More detailed discussion of studies on access tohealthy food is available through a joint researchreview published by PolicyLink and The Food Trust,titled The Grocery Gap: Who Has Access to HealthyFood and Why It Matters. 30Transportation and Food AccessNot only are grocery stores scarce in manyunderserved communities, but local residentstypically lack transportation options to easily getto stores located in other parts of town. LowincomeAfrican American and Latino householdsare less likely to own cars than white householdsand households with higher incomes, and as aresult often need to arrange rides with friends orrelatives, piece together multiple bus routes, or payfor taxi rides to do their grocery shopping. 31 Ruralhouseholds generally have greater access to cars, butthose that don’t—farmworkers, for example—havevirtually no public transportation available to them toreach stores beyond their immediate communities.For instance, in one example of the issue, residentsof low-income communities in the San Francisco BayArea who rely on public buses to travel to a grocerystore must spend about an hour commuting to andfrom the store. 32 The average resident in affluentcommunities in the Bay Area can reach morethan three supermarkets by car within 10 minutesround-trip. 33 Los Angeles youth, who particpiatedin a project run by the South Los Angeles HealthyEating, Active Communities (HEAC) coalition,produced a video dramatizing these transportationchallenges, available at www.vimeo.com/1016506.The Poor Pay More for FoodThe combination of the lack of nearby stores andfew transportation options leads low-incomeresidents to shop at small stores located closerto their homes. Though convenient, the smallergrocery stores, convenience stores, and grocery/gas combination stores commonly patronized bylow-income, inner-city and rural residents chargeprices that are higher than those found at largechain supermarkets because small businessestypically do not have the capacity to buy in largequantities and have less storage space. 35 Moreover,the primary items stocked by smaller stores aretypically processed snacks, soft drinks, and alcoholicbeverages and at best a limited supply of produceand dairy products. 36 As a result, many lowincomefamilies spend a lot more on food thanthey would if they had access to supermarketsand other fresh, healthy food retail outlets.The Need for ChoicesMyser Keels, a resident and community activist who was involved in a coalition that brought a supermarket to underservedWest Fresno, California, highlighted the problem caused by a scarcity of stores and limited transportation options at a pressconference: 34“We want choices. Some poor people use public transportation and they don’t haul all the groceries they need on the bus.And if they call a cab, the fare alone can put them in the hole. Some of the senior citizens I know have trouble gettingaround because they can’t move like they used to. They have to rely on other folks to take them shopping...It’s just a tragedy that we don’t have a decent shopping center in our area.”Healthy Food, Healthy Communities15