A 2009 study by the Department of Agriculture found that 2.3 million households do not have access to a car and live more than a mile from a supermarket. Much of the public health debate over rising obesity rates has turned to these “food deserts,” where convenience store fare is more accessible—and more expensive—than healthier options farther away. This map colors each county in America by the percentage of households in food deserts, according to the USDA’s definition. Data is not available for Alaska and Hawaii. (via Slate Labs - Food Deserts: An interactive map)
Please, that’s no excuse. Plenty of people don’t have cars; if they bought one of those baskets that you wheel around, they can easily walk or take a bus. I understand this statistic, but I’m sure a lot of these people live in a city. When I lived in Boston, the closest grocery store (Shaws) was about a mile or a mile and a half away (unless you count DeLuca’s, which was 2 streets over, but that was just an [overly expensive] market.) I’m POSITIVE, unless someone is handicap, that most of these people are just merely lazy and say they cannot walk a mile.
If you actually look at the map, you’ll see that most of the worst impacted areas are rural—meaning that distances to the grocery store may be much further than 1 mile (where I grew up, it was 20 miles to the nearest real grocery store) and that there are no public transit systems.
I have to assume that when a person looks at a map that actually shows them the areas most badly affected are not cities and they say, “I’m sure a lot of these people live in cities…most of these people are just lazy,” they either are really bad at geography or are simply so convinced of stereotypes of poor people, they can’t even process the evidence right in front of them.