Comment by naming_the_user | Hacker News Reader

Comment by naming_the_user | Hacker News Reader

naming_the_user

The term "food desert" has always seemed needlessly provocative to me.

Growing up in the UK my family used to drive 15-20 mins to the supermarket and do a big weekly or monthly shop. The nearest _decent_ non-petrol-station style shop with actual food would have been an hours' walk.

In the US unless you actually live in the absolute middle of nowhere like rural rural you're not more than 20 miles from a supermarket. Map example - everywhere other than the darkest red colour is a 15-20 min drive:

https://imgur.com/distance-to-nearest-large-supermarket-usa-...

Basically almost anywhere that has any meaningful population at all you're sub 20 mins drive. Of course there's not much in rural areas, that's what rural means.

There seems to be a focus on whether you "need" a car which has always seemed silly to me. If you don't have a car in the USA, outside of somewhere like NYC or specific metro corridors, you are going to have a significantly limited life in so many ways that having to drive to the supermarket just seems like a triviality in comparison.

Even in Britain people just like, have cars, it's normal, if you don't then outside of London it's just kind of embarrassing.

The whole thing seems like someone just wants an excuse to be provocative, just like, go to the supermarket, it's not that deep.

What is necessarily provocative about the term? Both the noun and verb forms of the word "desert" fit well here, especially in the context of the history that this article talks about.

"If you don't have a car ... you are going to have a significantly limited life in so many ways that having to drive to the supermarket just seems like a triviality in comparison." Except that everyone needs to eat, and we know that a poor diet can lead to many, many bad health outcomes. You're correct that there are other disadvantages, such as access to employment opportunities. But if you didn't live in a food desert, you could get a job at the grocery store, right?

"people just like, have cars, it's normal" Except that owning (or leasing) a car is a significant, ongoing expense. I barely use mine (<1,000 miles per year) and it still costs me $2k in insurance, registration, and maintenance. Some people just can't afford that. And what if you are young, old, or are unable to drive for any reason?

It's provocative because the implication is that it's a "problem" that needs to be "solved" when in reality there's a free market, if you think that an area needs a grocery store then start one up, you'll probably find that there is just isn't the demand.

Everyone needs to have a life, to have a life in the United States outside of a few very specific areas requires a member of your family to have a car.

> I barely use mine (<1,000 miles per year)

Right, so you obviously don't live in a food desert, presumably you're in NYC or San Francisco or the DC area or some other place where you can just use the metro for everything, this is not the case in the vast majority of the US, it's not even the case in most of Britain or Europe.

My grandma has to walk 15 minutes to get to her nearest food shop, one day she won't be able to make that walk, does she live in a food desert? No, she's just old, we'll help her out!

Check out "Poor Economics" by Banerjee and Duflo. It's a pretty useful term.

I'm in the US, which can be pretty sparse even in urban areas if they were designed with particular bulk transit in mind. We have an industrial site that several hundred people need to report to over a 12 hour period, some temporarily, some for the entire duration. There's no parking and it's surrounded by multilane roads, now, so without bussing, no one can enter or leave except on a particular schedule, which hasn't been aligning to their personal schedules, so they can't necessarily get back to their cars to get access to food that may exist half a mile away in an otherwise urban area. There are no food trucks, and there's no food delivery.

If you're there, there's no convenient way to eat anything you didn't bring. The city took a look and now classifies it as a food desert, so they have to fix it.

Other types of food deserts are named as an indicator of poverty. In my home town, there was one grocery store and only a few diners. Once the commuter rail ended, about a third of the population (largely plant and mill workers) could only access that that part of town if they had a vehicle that could take the highway. A formerly 10 minute trip by rail and foot suddenly took three or four times as long and required a car! With how many single car households there were, people lost access to convenient food and eventually formed their own town.

Something similar happened when the bus routes were changed in another city I lived in, intentionally. It was part of a "beautification" scheme to create a false impression of wealth and demographics in a bid to attract investors, and they thought manufacturing a food desert would keep people out. The first year, some elderly people on fixed income died trying to make the trip by foot in the heat or were hit by cars, and the city was sued to reinstate transport.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com