By Tera Ashley, Director of Food Access
If you missed part one of this blog series, you can catch up here.
““The poor may be disadvantaged in at least three ways as a result of limited mobility. First, the poor may be captive consumers of goods, services, or medical care. Retail establishments may be able to charge higher prices when consumers are limited to local neighborhood stores; social, recreational, and medical opportunities may be limited. Studies have demonstrated the scarcity of major supermarkets and banks in inner-city areas and have shown that inner-city and minority residents pay more for groceries because of the absence of major chains.” ”
In her eloquent assessment of U.S. poverty, Genevieve Giuliano sheds light on an often unseen disadvantage that non-driving and/or vehicle-less residents in food deserts and swamps face: the inability to shop around for lower prices. It is a prevalent belief that residents of LILA (low-income, low-access) areas do not purchase healthy foods because they simply lack the money to do so. While fresh fruit and vegetables may, indeed, be more difficult for low-income residents to afford than higher-income residents, the LILA environment itself may exacerbate this struggle. In an analysis of the small, independent grocery stores located within two urban food deserts in Minnesota, a significant number of food items were found to be significantly more expensive than the Thrifty Food Plan’s “market basket price” — the USDA’s national standard for low-cost, nutritious foods. An assessment of a food desert in South Dallas revealed a similar pattern: the majority of the focus group participants chose to shop outside of the community to avoid the higher prices of the small, independent stores nearby. Though the higher costs of groceries found in food deserts and food swamps may be due largely to the inability of smaller grocers to achieve the same discounts that large-scale chain grocers can negotiate with suppliers, higher costs can unfortunately lead to distrust between residents and local stores. Efficient, reliable public transportation may increase the choices of grocery stores available to a resident in a LILA area, which may lead to a wider range of prices – perhaps some more affordable – from which to choose.
The price of fresh fruits and vegetables is not the only concern facing residents of LILA areas. A lack of variety of fresh fruits and vegetables persists, and when these items are offered, residents sometimes complain of poor quality. Consider quotes taken from residents of a Nashville food desert when interviewed for a study on food accessibility in 2013:
““The quality is not as good as you would find in an actual grocery store. This can cause people to feel like they have to use a lot of canned or frozen goods.”
”When they do have fruits and vegetables, they are too often of such poor quality that we wouldn’t even want to buy them.”
”Companies vary their quality from store to store in different areas: low-income areas equal worse quality equal higher prices.””
Produce offered in a Nashville store.
The poor quality of fruits and vegetables found in the small, local stores located in LILA areas may be due to the quantity that store owners must order at one time, paired with the inability to absorb spoilage costs and replenish the fresh vegetables and fruit at the same rate as chain supermarkets. If this theory is correct, this situation perpetuates a conundrum: due to the low quality and low variety of fresh fruits and vegetables found in the small, independent neighborhood markets, residents in LILA areas make few purchases of fruit and vegetables from these stores. However, due to the residents making so few purchases of fruit and vegetables, the store owners may infer that residents do not want to purchase these items and allow the produce supply to dwindle or spoil before ordering more, which, in turn, affirms the residents’ perception of their neighborhood markets as having both low quality and low variety of fresh fruits and vegetables.
Despite evidence to support the cycle described above, there remains the popular notion — though unfounded — that residents of LILA areas simply do not prefer to eat healthy foods, particularly fruit and vegetables. To test this assumption, researchers in Detroit, MI devised a study in conjunction with the opening of a non-profit green grocer in a food desert to test the consumption behavior of the residents. Their findings revealed that neither the amounts nor the types of fruits and vegetables purchased by the residents significantly varied from that of the U.S. consumer average, thus demonstrating that the consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables is dependent on the accessibility of a wide variety of high quality, affordable produce.
In part three of this series, we will explore how a public transportation system that prioritizes residents’ accessibility to fresh fruits and vegetables can also help a city reach its environmental goals.