Eliminating them has been one of Michelle Obama’s pet issues:
But access to healthy foods isn’t a solution to obesity:
Unfortunately, more fresh food closer to home likely does nothing for folks at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. Obesity levels don’t drop when low-income city neighborhoods have or get grocery stores. A 2011 study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine showed no connection between access to grocery stores and more healthful diets using 15 years’ worth of data from more than 5,000 people in five cities. One 2012 study showed that the local food environment did not influence the diet of middle-school children in California. Another 2012 study, published in Social Science and Medicine, used national data on store availability and a multiyear study of grade-schoolers to show no connection between food environment and diet. And this month, a study in Health Affairs examined one of the Philadelphia grocery stores that opened with help from the Fresh Food Financing Initiative. The authors found that the store had no significant impact on reducing obesity or increasing daily fruit and vegetable consumption in the four years since it opened.
Aaron Carroll flags a new study that shows similar results:
This will be disappointing news to people who have been fighting to eliminate food deserts. But it’s not all bad news. The study found that perceptions of accessibility to healthier food went up. And there were signs that those residents who did choose to shop in the supermarket might be making healthier choices. But there were too few of them to make a real difference.
Access may be necessary, but it’s not sufficient. Policies that are aimed at just eliminating food deserts may not work. More needs to be done.
The Dish 