Access to grocers doesn't improve diets, study finds

[PoliticAverse]

Better access to supermarkets — long touted as a way to curb obesity in low-income neighborhoods — doesn't improve people's diets, according to new research. The study, which tracked thousands of people in several large cities for 15 years, found that people didn't eat more fruits and vegetables when they had supermarkets available in their neighborhoods.

Instead, income — and proximity to fast food restaurants — were the strongest factors in food choice.

The results, published Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine, throw some cold water on the idea that lack of access to fresh produce and other healthful foods is a major driver in the disproportionate rates of obesity among the poor, or that simply encouraging grocery chains to open in deprived areas will fix the problem, said study lead author Barry Popkin, director of the Nutrition Transition Program at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

Read the rest: http://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-food-deserts-20110712,0,537936.story

[bread_and_roses]

1. What a surprise. Not. When $1 gets you almost 400 calories at McD's

or a single 100 calorie apple, guess which makes more sense if you're poor? Hunger beats healthy every time.

[meegbear]

2. Access to MONEY improves diets

[ret5hd]

3. maybe access to GROCERIES would help...much the same as...

access to HEALTHCARE vs access to insurance.

[enlightenment]

4. These stories always remind me of the

history of Yorkshire pudding.

The tough shell of baked dough that passes for Yorkshire pud today bears no resemblance to the original - changes in cooking techniques and I suppose taste account for the change.

The original was bready, moist, greasy, and flavourful; a combination of bread (and a binder, like milk or an egg) that was placed in a pan. The pan was positioned under a roasting joint (piece of meat), and the drippings from the meat fell into the pan as they both cooked. The resulting pud was then sliced and served with the meal.

Why? Because most families were poorer than dirt and couldn't afford a joint large enough to feed everyone in the family sufficiently. The greasy, meat-flavoured bread pudding was used as the 'main course' - the joint was parceled out in smaller servings so everyone could have a taste.

The issue was money - the result was the creation of a greasy, not-very healthy, but very tasty staple food.

[4_TN_TITANS]

5. Probably in those days people worked off the fat

instead of it just hanging out in their arteries. My wife's farmer grandparents ate pure butter, cooked with lard, drank fresh whole milk, and had normal cholesterol levels until they died - but man did they work!

[enlightenment]

6. Oh, no doubt.

Most folks in the area worked in the mines or the textile industry or the foundries. The dish made perfect sense, both from an economic sense and from a nutritional one; carbs, fats, protein.

One of these days I'm going to try my hand at making it the old way, because the popover version of a modern Yorkshire pud is not very satisfying (imo).
:)

[AmyDeLune]

7. Breaking News! Water is Wet!!!

Big "duh!" for that study. Processed boxed, canned, and bagged crap is almost always cheaper than fresh produce and meat. Not to mention, easier to prepare if one is exhausted from working all day. One also has to have some idea of how to prepare raw food and have the time to do it.

[Igel]

8. Amazing.

The first assumption, that access to grocery stores would solve the problem of people, esp. low SES folk, not eating a healthy diet was squirrely. There were a number of alternative hypotheses, which would involve either saying that low-income made the difference, that taste preferences (innate or acquired) made the difference, that other cultural factors made the difference.

Income's a hard fix and doesn't let you blame a bogeyman; the other options all involve "blaming the victim." The default hypothesis was set as "access to grocery stores" not because it was necessarily the most likely; it was settled upon because it made for good PR and absolved the victims.

Personally, I've found that when I've been a victim I've had a lot to do with my own victimization--putting myself in situations where I know it'll be a hard slog and then, in that situation, did little to nothing to make life better or easier; or I made a series of choices that over 20 or 30 years led to some bad outcomes, some passive choices and some active.

So grocery store access isn't the culprit.

The next "absolve the victim" option is "low income." Except that a lot of low-income people have sufficient income to have a better diet. It's not like there's a gap between "middle income" and "poor as dirt", there's a nice continuum with many people in the low-income bracket making the choice to buy a better phone than more veggies or unprocessed food. So we have to say that either working class folk are too tired to prepare food or they are uniformly too poor. That's a crock. It's true for the poorest layer of the poor, but after that it becomes a choice.

The choices are these: Do I live on really bland, really boring yet healthy stuff? Or do I spend the same amount of money on less-healthy food that I find tastier? Do I up the amount of variety in my diet by spending what little discretionary income I have on food, or do I save it up for a Wii for my kid or a new cell phone?

Do I use the effort and energy I have after work to hang with friends and play B-ball or do I spend it chopping up kale and sorting beans? I have an hour, what do I use it for? Where I live, the younger go for sports, the men go for hanging out, and the women watch tv. Their diets are visible in their trash-cans: boxed lasagna, boxed fried chicken, boxed Bubba burgers, bagged french fries. Hell, they even manage to buy pre-prepared spaghetti in meat sauce in an aluminum tub. (I know what I use that hour for: I cook a lot of something and just reheat it.)

There's also the taste factor. We evolved to want fat, to scavenge salt, to crave protein and sugar in times when such things were hard to come by. They're common as dirt in the US. Watching kids in the school cafeteria, they go for what they're predisposed to wanting as well as what they're used to. High-fat, high-salt, high-sugar foods are tastier than leafy salads. Same price. Same "prep time" because they're in the same line. For those who have to pay something, they go for crappy food so they can buy a soda instead of better food and a cup of water. Same price, they choose less healthy. One 300-year-old 16-year-old had type II diabetes and hypertension. We kept confiscating Skittles, M&Ms, chocolate bars, sports drinks from him until the doctor banned them. Still, I've watched some kids, even in elementary school, go for the green salads. They're usually the ones that see mommy or grandma eating salads, the ones that have salads at home during the summer and on weekends. True, some is rebellion ("I'm 16, and I'm going to poison myself with fat!") or faddish ("Yes, I've consumed my RDA salt allotment for the month and my calorie count for whole day just with sports drinks before lunch! I rock. Uh, gotta go take a leak now").

But still, having cast doubt on the "absolve the victim" scenario of "no access to healthy foods" we now move to the less attractive but still serviceable "they're too poor and tired."

The problem is that each individual component of the problem can be proposed as the whole problem and then dismissed as not relevant. For some, a food desert really is a problem and access matters--just not for most. For others, low income is a problem--but probably not for most. For some, lack of time is a problem, but that doesn't explain why on days off they continue to have sucky diets. But for others, it's personal choices that are the crux of the matter.

For example, the study found that esp. young men went to fast food places to spend their food money. (I'll take that to be those not living with their parents.) The alternative? Do "women's work," go in the kitchen and be domestic. Just not manly enough, that. Moreover, it detracts from hanging-out-with-friends time or it's not exciting or trendy. Increase their income, the quality of the junk food might increase. Or it might not.