The Grocery Gap: Who Has Access to Healthy - The Food Trust

PolicyLinkThe Food TrustExecutive SummaryAn apple a day?For millions of Americans—especially peopleliving in low-income communities of color—finding a fresh apple is not so easy. Full-servicegrocery stores, farmers’ markets, and other vendorsthat sell fresh fruits, vegetables, and other healthyfoods cannot be found in their neighborhoods.What can be found, often in great abundance,are convenience stores and fast food restaurantsthat mainly sell cheap, high-fat, high-sugar,processed foods and offer few healthy options.Without access to healthy foods, a nutritiousdiet and good health are out of reach. Andwithout grocery stores and other freshfood retailers, communities are missing thecommercial hubs that make neighborhoodslivable, and help local economies thrive.For decades, community activists have organizedaround the lack of access to healthy foods asan economic, health, and social justice issue. Asconcerns grow over healthcare and the country’sworsening obesity epidemic, “food deserts” — areaswhere there is little or no access to healthy andaffordable food—have catapulted to the forefrontof public policy discussions. Policymakers atthe local, state, and national level have begunrecognizing the role that access to healthy foodplays in promoting healthy local economies,healthy neighborhoods, and healthy people.This report, a summary of our current knowledgeabout food deserts and their impacts oncommunities, provides evidence to inform thispolicymaking.To assess the current evidence base in thisdynamic and fast-growing field of research, wecompiled the most comprehensive bibliographyto date of studies examining food access and itsimplications conducted in the United States overthe past 20 years. This bibliography incorporates atotal of 132 studies: Sixty-one published in peerreviewedjournals and primarily conducted byuniversity-based researchers and 71 conductedby practitioners or policy researchers, sometimesin collaboration with academic researchers, andself-published (also known as “grey literature”).The studies include three nationwide analysesof food store availability and neighborhood,city, county, regional, statewide, and multistateanalyses covering 22 states across the country.Findings1. Accessing healthy food is a challengefor many Americans—particularly thoseliving in low-income neighborhoods,communities of color, and rural areas. Inhundreds of neighborhoods across the country,nutritious, affordable, and high quality foodis largely missing. Studies that measure foodstore availability and availability of healthy foodsin nearby stores find major disparities in foodaccess by race and income and for low-density,rural areas.• Lack of supermarkets. A 2009 study bythe U.S. Department of Agriculture foundthat 23.5 million people lack access to asupermarket within a mile of their home.A recent multistate study found that lowincomecensus tracts had half as manysupermarkets as wealthy tracts. Anothermultistate study found that eight percentof African Americans live in a tract with asupermarket, compared to 31 percent ofwhites. And a nationwide analysis foundthere are 418 rural “food desert” countieswhere all residents live more than 10 milesfrom a supermarket or supercenter—this is 20 percent of rural counties.7