Argumentative Essay On Food Deserts

Great Essays
341,000 Minnesotans struggle everyday to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables due to the lack of access and poverty (Jeremy Olson). This statistic ranks Minnesota the 7th worst food desert in the United States. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) defines food deserts as “low-income areas where grocery stores and supermarkets that sell fresh produce are over one mile away in urban areas or 10 miles away in rural areas.” Today, there are over 23 million people living in food deserts (Susie Quick). As a society, the number of food deserts needs to decrease because it leads to other health issues, such as obesity, and then can be solved by implementing a program that offers grants for mobile gardens, farmers markets and nutrition classes. …show more content…
Children are developing bad eating habits that could be passed on to their future children and then on to their future children, as eating habits are learned through seeing and experiencing, so this is a continuous cycle that will affect future generations. Not to mention, what someone eat can influence our mood and thoughts so, the more fat someone eats causes their brain to become inflamed. The inflammations of the brain links to an increase of mental illness such as depression and Alzheimer’s (Lauren M. Harding). While, if someone eats fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as fish, the inflammation of the brain will be minimized, and therefore reducing their chances of having a mental illness. This proves that food deserts have more of an impact than what most people …show more content…
Food deserts contribute to obesity, as people replace produce with less nutritious options and fast food. More importantly, the current solutions, including farmers markets and community gardens, are reducing the number of food deserts. Every solution implemented so far has strengths and weaknesses, but either way, the number of food deserts are slowly decreasing, which will have a positive impact on

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Food Desert Problem Essay

    • 1035 Words
    • 5 Pages

    One of the rising problems tackling America’s both large and rural areas today is the problem of food deserts. The term food deserts refers to an area in which there is no access to fresh, healthy and affordable food and more than 20% of the neighborhood falls below the poverty line (Powel, 2014). The problem of food deserts in America is a growing problem that has received a rising attention from U.S policies makers, public figures and corporations because it is a problem that’s affecting the U.S, not only on a national level but a local one as well ( Schimidt, 2013). According to Dosomething.org, an organization advocating for social changes, nearly 23.5 millions of people live in food deserts in America today. And chances are that you and I, if not already included in this number, at least knows someone who is counted in this number or is currently living in an area characterized as food deserts.…

    • 1035 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    This category can include any individuals that need any financial help on finding health foods. The author states how food deserts paralyze the ability for neighborhoods to have access to fresh foods. Due to this, people depend on neighborhood convenience store for their meals. Moreover, the 2014 farm bill was put into place, creating the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). This program was to create a balance of how much food were purchased at convenience stores.…

    • 303 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Colorado Food Deserts

    • 495 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Is Colorado suffering from too many food deserts, and what is the government’s role in combating the issue of fresh food availability in local communities? I'm researching Colorado food deserts to better understand how the State of Colorado addresses the communities that lack access to fresh food. As I don’t know much about the government’s stance on sustaining fresh food, this topic could potentially affect my ability to access ample nutrition. I've often heard friends comment on the dense fast and convenient food availability in their communities, without having easy access to grocery stores or markets. Collective worries and ideas on this deficit has sparked my interest to look at the factors involved for food deserts in local communities throughout the state.…

    • 495 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Food Deserts In America

    • 932 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Food deserts are very prevalent in America today. In a news article in the Indianapolis Business Journal, Jeffrey Hilburn says “More than 20 percent of the population in five of the eight counties in metro area (Indiana) live in food deserts.” That is in Indiana alone. A food desert is when there is no major grocery store within 1 mile of an area in an urban area and within 10 miles of a rural area. That means that the people within these areas are searching for places to get groceries.…

    • 932 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Pearson talks about the research he had conducted by focusing on people who live in food deserts and the reason in finding the variable that causes food deserts. Their definition of a food desert is anyone who lives “poor communities, where residents cannot buy affordable healthy foods.” When defining the word ‘food desert,’ it allows the researchers to focus their scope on the area that has grocery stores and healthy foods, but cannot afford it. This research has similar connections with part of the definition foodispower.org gave and the Farm Bill of 2008 because they both mentioned how the low-income families struggle purchasing healthy foods. This source differs in that they found evidence that the key elements of a food desert, fruit and vegetable price, socio-economic deprivation and lack of local supermarkets, were not factors influencing the consumption of fruit or vegetable.…

    • 1869 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Food security requires that purchase prices reflect the full cost of production. Industrial agriculture relies on chemical, nonrenewable inputs rather than natural, continuously regenerated sources. It has increased food insecurity by destroying small farms, rural communities, and the small farmers’ capacity to produce diverse total yields of nutrient-rich crops. The Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC) leaders, Michael Hamm and Anne Bellows, define community food security as “a condition in which all community residents obtain a safe, culturally acceptable, nutritionally adequate diet through a sustainable food system that maximizes community self-reliance and social justice.”…

    • 1550 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Limited funds mean limited access to nutritious foods such as fresh fruits and vegetables or whole grain carbohydrates, which are often more expensive than commodity goods like flour or shortening. Even getting to the grocery store can be a challenge for people without cars. A high percentage of Native American communities are located in “food deserts,” defined as a low-income area where the nearest supermarket is over a mile away, making obtaining fresh foods that much more…

    • 502 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Cause of Obesity in Lower Income Areas Obesity in the United States is an epidemic that affects many but, looking at the areas it affects the most the lower income areas the most this is only because of parents in lower income areas not being able to find any healthy natural foods to feed their children also, parents work schedule and city life so some. Living in a lower income area the choices of healthy foods are extremely hard to find, this is due to the fact lower income areas are in cities and are food insecure, which means being without reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable nutritious foods. . The food research and action center (2011) says, "all segments of the population are affected, food insecure and low-income…

    • 1460 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    When a person thinks of hunger typically their mind goes to a third world country, where a sad, hungry child sit alone in the rain begging for food. Most people’s minds leave our country and travel halfway around the world to see the face of hunger. Our minds never stay close to home when we think of someone who is hungry. This is probably because we live in America one of the richest and fattest countries in the world. How could anyone go hungry in a land where there is over 14,000 McDonalds?…

    • 1513 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Obesity And Poverty

    • 1525 Words
    • 6 Pages

    One of the main reasons obesity often occurs are because of food deserts. Moore explains food deserts as “areas where community members do not have access to fresh, healthy foods” (Moore). Some communities are filled with fast foods and convenience stores that only provide non-healthy foods to the people within the community city limits. Moore argues “Just because the amount of fast foods and convenience stores in that particular area gives the assumption that low-income communities are non-profitable, that will lead to more non-healthy foods” (Moore).…

    • 1525 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    Food Desert

    • 1224 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The concept of a Community Supported Agriculture was created for those who didn’t have access to regular resources to purchase food. This has largely to do with the fact that most areas are known as what we call a food desert. Food deserts are urban neighborhoods and rural towns without ready access to fresh, healthy, and affordable food. Instead of supermarkets and grocery stores, these communities may have no food access or are served only by fast food restaurants and convenience stores that offer few healthy, affordable food options. How does one define where a food desert might be?…

    • 1224 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Great Essays

    Essay On Food Deserts

    • 1168 Words
    • 5 Pages

    We can start to address the food desert issue buy having better quality grocery stores need to be built in urban areas. This grocery stores cannot just be like another bigger gas station that only sells junk food. These store must sell healthy fresh nutritional food year round. Farmers markets in areas of food insecurity are another great way to distribute healthy food throughout the community. Not only must this food be healthy but it also has to be affordable to the people of that…

    • 1168 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Great Essays

    The documentary Food Choices: How Our Diet Affects the Environment produced by Michal Siewierski and Kaiser Permanente, a non-for-profit health plan, while different non-fiction forms of communication that share a common mission of providing important information on the effects of the food we eat and how changing our diet can improve our lives. The documentary Food Choices advocates the benefits of eating a plant-based diet and begins by discrediting long believed myths about eating land animals and the advantages of doing so and makes the connection between food choices that the consumer is making and the environment. Kaiser Permanente is an integrated managed care consortium that has started to embrace the concept of disease prevention…

    • 1477 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Human Prospect Essay

    • 2516 Words
    • 10 Pages

    But even if enough food was distributed to keep people from dying of starvation, there is the problem of distribution, storing it, rationing it and the list goes on. We thought a way to make this happen was types of community gardens. However, this requires education. Therefore, a completely new barrier will need to be figured out. We also learned that only 4% of America’s population is food producing.…

    • 2516 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Banning Junk Food Essay

    • 1027 Words
    • 5 Pages

    According to Health guideline, people who eat fast food are 51 percent more likely to develop depression than those who eat less fast food. It was also found that the faster food they consumed, the more likely study participants were to develop depression. Transition, school is where bullying takes place the most and overweigh and obese children are especially targeted. Children and teens who are victims of buying may have thought of suicide and some of them actually commit suicide (child obesity). Eating junk food does not just affect children’s health; it also affects their study.…

    • 1027 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays