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'Food desert' fallacy shocks liberals: You can't get poor people to eat healthier food
American Thinker ^ | 02/11/2014 | Thomas Lifson

Posted on 02/11/2014 6:49:46 AM PST by SeekAndFind

It turns out that you can bring produce sections to poor neighborhoods, but you can't get poor people to eat healthier food. This comes as a shock to liberals who believe in the comprehensive theory of victimology -- that all problems afflicting people who fall into ethnic, sexual, or other identities regarded as victims are due to external factors, not to their own choices.

Patti Neighmond writes for NPR:

In inner cities and poor rural areas across the country, public health advocates have been working hard to turn around food deserts - neighborhoods where fresh produce is scarce, and greasy fast food abounds. In many cases, they're converting dingy, cramped corner markets into lighter, brighter venues that offer fresh fruits and vegetables. In some cases, they're building brand new stores.

"The presumption is, if you build a store, people are going to come," says Stephen Matthews, professor in the departments of sociology, anthropology and demography at Penn State University. To check that notion, he and colleagues from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine recently surveyed residents of one low-income community in Philadelphia before and after the opening of a glistening new supermarket brimming with fresh produce.

What they're finding, Matthews says, is a bit surprising: "We don't find any difference at all. ... We see no effect of the store on fruit and vegetable consumption."

The deranged premise behind the entire "food desert" theory was that crass corporations were bypassing the opportunity to sell healthy foods to poor people out of malice, or at best ignorance. The idea that local people weren't interested in buying healthy food, and that led to low demand, and hence low supply, was unworthy of consideration. These people did not understand that demand creates supply in a free economy


(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: food; poor; poverty
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To: SeekAndFind
The presumption is, if you build a store, people are going to come,

If you build a new store, they WILL come.

Once, at least.

21 posted on 02/11/2014 7:06:48 AM PST by Izzy Dunne (Hello, I'm a TAGLINE virus. Please help me spread by copying me into YOUR tag line.)
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To: SeekAndFind

This reminds of a time a few years ago when I stopped for gas in an uncomfortable part of Memphis. There was no card reader on the pump, so I had to go inside to pay. After I searched a moment I asked the old guy who appeared to be the owner where to find Diet Coke. He told me he quit stocking it because “these people won’t drink it.”


22 posted on 02/11/2014 7:07:38 AM PST by .45 Long Colt
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To: bboop

The hubris of Leftists is breathtaking—and scary.


23 posted on 02/11/2014 7:07:53 AM PST by Savage Beast
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To: SeekAndFind
public health advocates have been working hard [...] In many cases, they're converting dingy, cramped corner markets into

These advocates are converting....? Or these advocates are belligerating the gubment to do it?

24 posted on 02/11/2014 7:08:47 AM PST by Izzy Dunne (Hello, I'm a TAGLINE virus. Please help me spread by copying me into YOUR tag line.)
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To: SeekAndFind

So a reasonable person on a planet with no political correctness would be able to say that their self-inflicted pathologies are not caused by evil ‘oppressors.’


25 posted on 02/11/2014 7:08:56 AM PST by I want the USA back (Media: completely irresponsible traitors. Complicit in the destruction of our country.)
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To: SeekAndFind

The reason for “food deserts” is a very simple one - there isn’t one. There are, however, “father deserts.”

A good block of the poor are one-income (or “single mother”) homes. These women are pressed for time and are missing the teammate and extra income that a father would bring to the family. Thus, the mother buys easily prepared food and shies from spending time cooking healthier food for her children.

Her children become obese because, as another side effect, she keeps them in the house, watching TV as she has less ability to monitor them than a traditional married family does.

We might as well be honest about the cause.


26 posted on 02/11/2014 7:09:48 AM PST by struggle
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To: bboop

If they were satisfied to go alone down The Road to Hell, continuing to pave it with their good intentions, it would be their problem and of little consequence to anyone else, but unfortunately they’re determined to drag everyone else down the Road along with themselves.


27 posted on 02/11/2014 7:11:05 AM PST by Savage Beast
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To: ClearCase_guy

....hence the birth of another “food desert”.


28 posted on 02/11/2014 7:11:18 AM PST by ErnBatavia (The 0baMao Experiment: Abject Failure)
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To: longfellowsmuse

I’m a foodie and find this hard to comprehend...my lunch yesterday, ten minutes to prepare...cooked up just a cup of high-fiber pasta, then when half done, drained and poured in a can if tomatoes and a can of artichoke quarters. Let the liquid cook down. Serve up with a teaspoon of pesto ... All pantry items, but adding them together made it taste fresh. Delicious

Not that I don’t relish fried chicken and burgers, but just once in a while.


29 posted on 02/11/2014 7:12:35 AM PST by Mamzelle
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To: SeekAndFind

Having grown up in a poor neighborhood my observation is that most of “the poor” are that way for a reason. Of course this is not true in every case. People are poor most often those who don’t do the little every day things right. They don’t finish school, they don’t wait to have children until they are stable (and married), they don’t delay gratification, they don’t avoid unnecessary expenses like booze, smokes and entertainment.

How would people who habitually make terrible choices like these be expected to make good dietary choices?

I know this might be unpopular on here but I think there is definitely a place for life skills being taught in school. Just because someone’s parents make bad choices doesn’t mean that their kids should be locked into the same pattern. Show the kids that there is a different way to live.


30 posted on 02/11/2014 7:12:51 AM PST by Straight Vermonter (Posting from deep behind the Maple Curtain)
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To: SeekAndFind

We certainly are not in a food desert but we live close to a small Wal-Marts and we’ve gotten used to using it more and more often. It has a wonderful produce department. It’s a great place to find ethnic foods like queso fresco and chinese vegetables. Although our county is known as the “golden ghetto” its probably more ethnically diverse than anywhere I’ve lived including the urban areas. My point however is that a lot of African Americans shop there. The prices are good. The produce (not the meat) is excellent. Lots of inventory turn over so good freshness. I’m sure that Wal-mart has tried to move into some of these urban areas but has been banned by political correctness.


31 posted on 02/11/2014 7:13:46 AM PST by Mercat
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To: SeekAndFind

The notion of food deserts took a big hit when the locals ran Trader Joe’s out of town for “attracting white people.”


32 posted on 02/11/2014 7:16:56 AM PST by dangus
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To: SeekAndFind
...What they're finding, Matthews says, is a bit surprising...

No it's not. "Food deserts" are a liberals wet dream allowing them to use other people's money for social engineering that nobody wants except the idiot liberal.

33 posted on 02/11/2014 7:17:01 AM PST by Oldeconomybuyer (The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.)
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To: SeekAndFind

“...healthier food.”

So some food is less healthier than other food. Perhaps that less healthier food should exercise more. Or, use “healthful”.


34 posted on 02/11/2014 7:17:41 AM PST by SgtHooper (If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.)
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To: YankeeReb

If only poor starving countries knew this! /sarc


35 posted on 02/11/2014 7:22:19 AM PST by CommieCutter ("For an idea to be too simplistic, it must first be proven wrong" --Thomas Sowell)
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To: Ditter

That, too. But if the locals really wanted fresh spinach, it would be carried in the 7-11 next to the Ding Dongs.


36 posted on 02/11/2014 7:28:22 AM PST by SoothingDave
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To: SeekAndFind

It’s a definition thing again. “Food desert” means a place barren of places to buy food. Not certain food. Here it means no supermarkets at all and residents have to travel far out of their neighborhoods to do real shopping. Gas station and QuickieMart stuff abounds. What is happening is that liberals are faced with the fact that GIVEN A CHOICE people don’t choose as you want them to. That’s what a variety and choice means-a choice to say ‘no’ too! Funny how choice is good for some things but not others. You have to give people what they want- not what you WANT them to want.


37 posted on 02/11/2014 7:29:57 AM PST by ClearBlueSky (When anyone says its not about Islam...it's about Islam. That death cult must be eradicated.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Other than a few little old ladies who use their EBT (food stamps)to buy real food, when I go to the supermarket most of the EBT purchases I see are for chips, pop and other junk food. However, my favorite is a gentleman who used his EBT card to buy a 99 cent bottle of soda and then paid $8 cash to buy a bottle of cheap whiskey.


38 posted on 02/11/2014 7:31:09 AM PST by The Great RJ
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To: SeekAndFind

Poor decisions made them dependent , same mindset with eating.


39 posted on 02/11/2014 7:32:19 AM PST by DeWalt (Times are more like they used to be than they are today.)
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To: SeekAndFind

-— “The presumption is, if you build a store, people are going to come -—

Said the professor. Maybe he learned something.


40 posted on 02/11/2014 7:34:29 AM PST by St_Thomas_Aquinas ( Isaiah 22:22, Matthew 16:19, Revelation 3:7)
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