> "food deserts", low-income census tracts that are more than one mile from a supermarket in urban or suburban areas and more than 10 miles from a supermarket in rural areas.
One mile. That's absurdly narrow. They are tailoring the definitions to meet the resultant behavior. You can grocery shop once every two weeks or less and be healthier than the average American by eating some of the cheapest possible foods, such as rice, beans, and cabbage, carrots, pasta... as an upper income individual I feed my kids this stuff all the time, its dirt cheap and they (we) are happy to eat it. There's serious problems to be dealt with in the US with respect to lower income support, but IMHO food related ones are mostly cultural / educational, not "lives 2 miles from super market, impossible to eat healthy now".