Essay On Food Deserts

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Make America Healthy Again Most of us don’t have a problem with going to the grocery store nearest to us or access to health food. Today, there are many low-income neighborhoods that live in food desert or food swamp. A food desert is when a person doesn’t have a grocery store or farmers market within a mile. Nearly 55 million people live in these food deserts and are suffering from this food poverty. According to Yael Grauer’s article “Solutions to help 55 million people out of food desert”, Food desert usually affects low-income neighborhoods and Black and Hispanic neighborhoods. Beside the food desert, many communities are in food Swamps. Food swamps are neighborhoods that have little access to healthy food and the streets are filled with junk food. As a community, we need to help people get out food deserts or food swamps.
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The food desert isn't really making the health issue like the food swamp. Since most people get lazy to make the food they want, they turn to fast food restaurants. Food swamps are big predators to compare to food desert by making the obesity rates go higher than usual. Even though the food deserts are serious problem, the food swamps are making the health issues. “Low-income families are twice likely to be overweight…Black and Latino children are about twice as likely to be obese compared to white children” (Karpyn and Treuhaft). As of 2016, the obesity rating has gotten worst. As of 2012, African American obesity rating is at 20%, Latino obesity rating is 22.4% and white obesity rating is at 16%. In California, the obesity rate in children ages 10 to 17 is at 31.1%, which 24th place in obesity among children. The number one state with highest rating of obesity amongst children ages 10-17 is Tennessee which 37.7%. Little by little these numbers are getting higher and higher and we aren't doing anything to get them going