Food Deserts Research Paper

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Poverty is a current complex issue in the United States’ society. One impact on some of its citizens is the inability to meet the basic human need for food. Obtaining a nutritious and healthy meal allows them to be at their full potential and give back into their country’s productivity. In terms of low income individuals with access to supermarkets, philadelphia ranks number 1. Where there is poverty and higher rates of hunger, the cause is likely to be food deserts. However, there are many initiatives that have and are currently taking place to help hunger. One of these initiatives is Philabundance’s “Fare & Square,” a non-profit supermarket that set up shop in the Chester area where there have not been adequate food vendors for some time.…show more content…
Food deserts are measured by the distance to a supermarket from homes and back with the minimum being the distance of about a mile, including or excluding easy transportation to and from the destination. About 7.7% of the U.S. population live in an area that would be classified as a food desert (USDA). Food insecurity is defined as, “limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods or limited ability to acquire such foods in socially acceptable ways” (Anderson, USDA). In addition, 16.1% of the U.S. do not know where their next meal is coming from. This is known as food insecurity, or in simpler terms,…show more content…
The HFSSM are self-reports of uncertain, insufficient or inadequate food access, availability due to financial instability. There are 623,000 households in the state of Pennsylvania that are food insecure. There are also 255,000 households are close to becoming food insecure according to the FRAC 2008 to 2010. The majority of these households live in the greater Philadelphia area, where Philabundance’s “Fare and Square” originated. The West side of Chester is one of the 35 food deserts in the Delaware Valley; according to the USDA’s food desert locator there are more than 34,000 residents in Chester and more than half earn less than 200% of the poverty level (American Community Survey, 2008-2010 estimates). (Angelynn) Food deserts and food insecurity have similar wording in their definitions. However, there seems to be little correlation between them. Food deserts alone do not cause food insecurity, even if people living in the tract had access to a grocery store, it does not mean those with the vicinity of a grocery store are able to afford items from said place. However, there are other circumstances that cause people to be food insecure, with or without federal aids like

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