Obesity is now an epidemic in the United States; with over sixty-six percent of American adults who are obese or overweight, this issue should not be taken lightly. However, adults are not the only people in this country who suffer from overweight; children are also a vulnerable population to obesity. In this study, Shafft et. all “focus[ed] on investigating the extent to which incidence of child overweight may be linked to poor or uneven access to full-service grocery stores” (155). This study focused on the rural population in Pennsylvania by taking an analysis of 501 school districts in Pennsylvania. The analysis had multiple stages which included: comparing the demographics, household, and community characteristics (population density), districts that were included in an earlier study on children who were overweight, and then model the relationship between children’s weight and school …show more content…
all found relationships between the depth of poverty and food-deserts. They found that the deeper the poverty of the area, the higher number of food-deserts in the area. Sadly, the researchers also found, “There were 92 school districts total, 380 schools, and nearly 180,000 students. Of those, 16 percent of schools and 14 percent of students were located in food-desert school districts” (166). Fourteen percent may not seem like a significant amount but 25,200 students live in a food-desert school district. How can this problem be so prominent and yet schools do not strive to provide more education and, or try to figure out solutions? One point that the authors brought up was how Child No Left Behind legislation cuts down or completely cuts out physical education; as a society, people care more about their child’s test scores than his or her health and that is a major issue. Another powerful result that Shafft et. all discovered was there was a prominent relationship between child obesity and food deserts. Therefore, how can society change to promote children’s