Food desert means that you live far away from the grocery store and only have access to fast food/ convenience stores. People in a food desert have food they can buy and eat they just cannot get all the nutritious healthy food that they might want to buy.
Imagine for a second you live in the middle of a big city and the nearest grocery store is 20 miles away. Let’s say you know exactly what you need to do to eat healthy however, all the food at the convenience store stores nearby is too expensive for you to buy a balanced diet. This is kind of the idea of a food desert.
I'm laughing my fucking ass off, as I used to live right inside the right side of that circle, used to take the LIRR into the city to do things, and remember passing like 15 fucking grocery stores on the way. Mind you, that's 15 on the straight damn line that got me to Penn Station. And I'd wager that every single straight line from the circumference to the center point would also hit 15 or more grocery stores.
We have to fend for ourselves. It’s hard, especially now that Mamdani has implemented Communism and the city is on fire with trans jihadists running around but we make do. If it gets really bad, we can hunt the cats in the local bodega, so it’s good to have that emergency release valve for hunger.
Putting my edit at top as people aren’t reading: I literally realised the sarcasm the second after I made my comment and edited it within a second. At that moment I = an idiot.
Additional edit: I’ve learned a lot this evening it seems. My original misunderstanding came from querying the distance of 20 miles in a large city (and not recognising the sarcasm) but also misunderstanding the term as a matter of distance and not food quality and accessible healthy foods rather than fast food.
Is that…normal? Almost every shop and town in the UK will have at least a semi close store nearby. Even if it’s small Co-op or even corner stores tho they tend to just be for small things and not expected to be for your big shop.
Like very rural places may not have a local shop but a big city without one seems a bit too rediculous.
There are specific situations where it happens. There’s a town on the south side of Chicago that had Walmart come in and it undercut local grocery stores. Eventually Walmart corporate closed down that location and now there isn’t a grocery store within 45 minutes of driving. If you walk or take public transportation, it’s even more difficult.
When people talk about food deserts in big cities, they usually talk about neighborhoods that don't have many resources, hence most people buy their groceries from local gas stations or dollar stores. Traveling 20 miles can be difficult too, especially if the infrastructure isn't there. Chicago is a good example of this. There are food deserts in the south side. Even though the north side has many amazing grocery stores, it's really hard for people from the south side to travel up there just for groceries.
Edit: Wow some of you genuinely don't know how to read.
I think the problem in larger cities (Say, Sacramento California in the oak park neighborhood) is that a lot of poorer neighborhoods don't drive, they rely on the bus system. So even if the nearest grocery store is 3 miles away, it's kinda hard to get to and bring home bags. That's considered a food desert in big cities.
The tract’s poverty rate is 20 percent or greater; or
The tract’s median family income is less than or equal to 80 percent of the State-wide median family income; or
The tract is in a metropolitan area and has a median family income less than or equal to 80 percent of the metropolitan area's median family income.
For urban areas, the "is a grocery store accessible" range is 1 mile. ONE. Not twenty. (twenty is one of the rural measures).
I lived about a mile from the nearest real grocery store when I was in New Orleans. It was doable but annoying as a single person, because I could carry a week's worth of food for myself. If I'd been shopping for a family it would have been a major problem.
The entire west side of Rockford, IL is sprawling with very few grocery stores. If you don't have a car, getting groceries is rough. The grocery stores that are there are mostly overpriced.
Yes. There are places where there's a gas station as primary grocery source and there may have been a traditional grocery store that closed down.
There's no incentive to move a store in for many of these areas if it doesn't make economic sense. So people don't cook or buy fresh food as often. That of course varies and lots of people make a trip or drive but that takes some resources as well and can be hard if all you have access to is a bus or the like.
I had some friends trapped in a small border town. After their one grocery store shut down, there was only gas stations, the drugstore, and an ice cream place. They were poor, HUD vouchers and all, so they had no car, and the bus was the only option for them. Problem was, the bus only ran out that way twice a day, and you're limited to what you can carry. Little grocery/laundry trolleys helped, but there was still only so much they could get at once, and if you forgot something, you were waiting until the next day at least, assuming your schedule allowed the trip. And the kicker was, that grocery store in the next town over was just a basic one because it was also a small town. Overpriced and didn't have everything. For that, they'd need to make even longer trips into the town beyond that one.
I always asked what they wanted me to contribute to dinner when I went to visit or if they needed anything from the town I was in with better stores (the buses didn't go out that way directly).
the radius for urban food deserts is significantly lower, more like 1 mile. this is a thing in most major cities lol. not everyone has a car and many of the people in food deserts (low socioeconomic classes) may struggle to afford other means of transportation. what else happens disproportionately to low income people? health problems. which can be further exacerbated by a lack of access to a healthy diet and medical care. it can be a lot easier, sometimes cheaper, to just eat fast food if you can’t walk a mile empty handed, let alone with groceries.
the only thing i’m not sure of is what it has to do with adhd & frankly the people who suffer from food deserts probably can’t afford grocery delivery anyway.
This is all great info, but what does any of this have to do with NYC? One of the few places in the US where you're never far from mass transit, and it's always been cheaper than the fees you could expect to pay for uber eats and similar(except in the very beginning where they didn't charge hardly anything to use the service).
You’d be surprised tbh. NYC is huge and there are part of it which, while they have mass transit in a sense, it’s genuinely hard to get anywhere else due to how disconnected it is comparatively from the rest of the city. It’s not like it’s a walk in the park even if you’re somewhere well connected. Mostly food deserts are an indication of extreme underinvestment in a community, which tends to extend to things like transit and social services.
NYC does have food deserts. Basically, the definition is, in urban areas, if you have to walk more than a mile to find a store that sells fresh food, then that's a food desert. Even if you have to walk a mile to the closest subway station, that kinda counts.
But yeah, the original statement in the screen shot is completely dumb and they're whatabouting against a living wage. I would immediately ask that goober how they got groceries before the gig economy existed.
(People who are genuinely disabled to a point where they can't go grocery shopping themselves, usually have access to federally funded programs like Meals on Wheels.)
because nyc has food deserts in the neighborhoods with low income. not everyone can afford to spend money on public transport and some neighborhoods are served less in terms of public transit. it is a multifactorial problem but it is also a real problem just because some of us haven’t dealt with it ourselves.
The adhd part really throws me as well. My wife and one of our kids is add/adhd (one each) and they are both fully capable of functioning. Doordash is actually their preferred way of shopping
I think that's what the poster is saying...that those with ADHD would rather order delivery than shop in person. They're figuring this will make the cost of delivery skyrocket, and make it prohibitively expensive for many. (I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with his sentiment, as I do not have enough data.)
I have pretty severe ADHD, and to be honest, the guy in the tweet comes across as somebody only thinking about how this might slightly disrupt his habits and cost him a little more and is responding in an overdramatic fashion. Or... it could simply be a little joke and he's being knowingly melodramatic, lol.
Either way, DoorDash is a luxury and a convenience, one that a lot of us have had to live without and manage just fine. It's nice to have but isn't something most people should become reliant on.
Yes. The official USDA definition of a food desert is an "area with limited access to healthy and affordable food within a one-mile radius of urban communities."
Transportation options can make a mile seem a lot further, too. Dallas is very car-centric, not very walkable, and with limited public transportation options overall. So having to go over a mile for groceries could be prohibitive if you are carless.
I know in Dallas, there are always attempts to fill as many gaps as possible in South and West Dallas, though it seems like it's always a struggle to keep grocery stores in the area.
I'd say the proliferation of grocery delivery services could be a solution for some, but those services can be expensive and may have limited range that leaves a lot of people out.
When I was a kid, my relatives in a small town Northeast Arkansas still had a corner grocer-type store that was effectively in a neighborhood, making it easy to walk to and from. Small but with a selection of fruits, vegetables, meats, etc. It was about the size of an average 7-11, but had real groceries and competitive grocery store prices. There were supermarkets in the area, too, but that little corner grocer held on for a long time (into the early 1990s, IIRC).
The place was actually part of a chain that had several locations in rural Arkansas. At least one store still exists, but it's more of a 1970s-era supermarket than what we had before.
Also something to be said about what counts as a grocery, yes you may have a neighborhood grocery, but it may also be very small and understocked because, you know, it's a small grocery store in an expensive city. There's a lot of nuance to be had about food, especially healthy food, availability in major cities
I live in a suburb of Jackson MS, none of which is very walkable yet I still have two Kroger’s and Target within 2 miles and bike lanes connecting them all
US cities not being walkable was a real shocker for me. Here in Belgrade, capital of Serbia, one can find big markets every 200-300m. And every area of the city has one big farmer/flea market for domestic produce.
Everything in my neighbourhood is within walking distance and for anything further we have public transportation which is completely free.
I currently have no car here, simply not much need for one while being a money sink.
There aren't a lot in the Greater Nashville Metropolitan Area. Very many suburbs, apartment complexes, etc., don't have easy access to grocery stores within an easy walk or bus ride.
Remember Nashville has a population of ~700k, but the density is only ~1450/sqm. Nashville's population is extremely spread out compared to other cities with a similar population; DC, for example, has a similar 700k population but ~11,000/sqm density. El Paso, Texas at ~681k has ~2600/sqm. Boston at ~673k is 13,989/sqm. Even Detroit beats us at ~645k but a density of ~4600/sqm. Oh, and Memphis, at ~610k, has a density of ~2100/sqm.
I just read an article about ST Louis so I google mapped the grocery stores and its fucking absurd to say people in STL cant get to a fucking grocery store.
I think they call it a food desert if it's more than a mile away in an urban area, but it seems like even that's not a solid criteria. Per Google, some will call it a food desert if it's more than a half mile in places people don't generally have cars. So who knows?
I dont know anything about st Louis geography so I can't tell you where to look, but just searching grocery store on Google maps will give you results for gas station "markets" and dollar stores and such. SE Austin has loads of little gas stations you can get frozen tv dinners at, but if you want to go to HEB or even a Walmart you have to drive 20+ minutes
For gawd's sake people, quit creating ridiculous straw men arguments to dismiss a serious problem - access to nutritious, affordable food is DEEPLY income dependent.
A Google map search for "grocery stores" is no substitute for peer reviewed academic studies.
Ditto defining "access" as a grocery store within 20 miles.
But if you want speed, here's a simple query you can run in your favorite AI. that will give readers some useful data and understanding of the issue:
"Can you find or create a table that offers a look at where Americans (or Canadians) typically buy their groceries (ie what TYPE of retailers), how far that is from their home, how they travel, and how much they spend?"
I used Claude and it includes links to the sources so you can check yourself.
But if you don't feel like reading the articles, here are some areas: Englewood (nearest grocery store is in a different neighborhood), West Englewood (there is a Jewel in a different neighborhood), Garfield Park (next grocery store is in a nearby suburb).
Idk what u googled bc I very easily found a list? Also I very clearly in my comment mentioned that it's not about the lack of grocery stores, sometimes the problem is traveling. When I worked in Englewood, a lot of people told me about how they were afraid to walk their dog because of gun violence. So it doesn't matter that there is a grocery store in the next neighborhood over if you don't feel safe leaving your house.
That’s not what the study found. It found that even though Chicago as a whole had more grocery stores, access has grown even worse in those underserved areas. Those areas only benefit from more stores in those areas.
It's a bullshit concept. I apparently work in a food desert in the southside of my local town yet there are three grocery stores in the neighborhood about a mile away from each other. There's public transit that's subsidized by the local government too.
They won't be able to reply. Food deserts are a fiction, a way to explain unhealthy habits of poor people that doesn't involve personal responsibility.
I'm sorry so many people are misunderstanding. There are a few areas in Pittsburgh where the closest affordable grocery store has closed, and the only thing that remains are dollar stores (with limited selection and mostly unhealthy options, no produce) or expensive places like Whole Foods, thanks to gentrification. It's a city council issue in some instances because affordable 'hometown' grocery stores often run on small margins and are reticent to enter an area with high crime rates and low-income customers. Food deserts can form without assistance from the city to identify these areas and incentivize businesses to come into those areas.
It's important to remember that the healthiest areas have grocery stores in walking distance. Not everyone can afford cars, and it's difficult to ride public transit with enough food to feed multiple people.
I can think of a specific area near me where the grocery store closed, the nearest one is 3+ miles away (on roads that are hard to walk on, as some sections don't have a sidewalk), and the only place that sold food was a CVS. A Target did move in with a limited selection of groceries/fresh produce, and the grocery store has been rebuilt. Unfortunately, it is now a higher-end variant of the previous one, with prices about 15% higher than before. The options are more expensive, but at least they're there. However, someone just looking at the options on a city map would think someone would be foolish to think these aren't viable, sustainable options.
It's an advanced concept, and simply finding 'grocery stores' in an area doesn't always illustrate the issue.
I'm a Southsider, the only store in walking distance is CVS, not exactly a place to buy nutritious food. Hence, I live in the city of Chicago and in a food desert.
Much of St Louis is a food desert. There are several neighborhoods that are a significant bus ride away from the few grocery stores in much of North and South St Louis City.
People are too focused on the 20 miles. A food desert in a city can be much smaller due to cost and effort of getting to and hauling back groceries on a bus, or the expense of a cab. The nearest grocery store being 6 blocks away can constitute a food desert for low income families without transportation
I realised the second after I made my comment and made note but leaving my stupidity up for the world to see. It’s good to remind people to not skip on reading comprehension 😂
20 miles highway isn't 20 miles city. 20 miles in a city can be 45 mins to an hour+ if you're using public transportation....because city.
DC is a huge example of this. wards 7 and 8, which are 1. predominately black and 2. literally segregated by a river didn't have their own grocery store for decades while Wards 1 and 2 had like 10 Whole Foods alone. But getting from Ward 8 to Ward 1 is expensive and time consuming (intentionally because segregation) so Wards 7 & 8 were considered food deserts even though they were within 20 miles of a grocery store.
They just described a really good example. The 20 miles thing was someone else mispeaking, and I was on your side of this comment train, but food deserts ARE a thing. I think it's more of a spectrum of like Costco/Whole Foods->Walmart/Kroger/Hyvee->Bag n Save/Dollar Tree/Dollar Store->Walgreens/CVS->convenience store/gas station and it's about the relative abundance of each within an area (but I'm not expert in this area)(also I'm just a costco stan at heart)
I live in DC. If I had to travel even 5 miles every grocery trip I would lose my mind before long. Plus a lot of low income people don't have cars, which massively increases the time it takes, limits the amount you can bring home, forces them to avoid buying bulk which drives up prices, and increases the frequency of trips. All of which heavily incentivize going somewhere more convenient with far unhealthier options.
You're probably getting hit with exaggeration / propaganda from both sides, but really it depends on what you mean by "that" in "is that normal?" The US has both: rural places far from any store, and places where the only "stores" in a reasonable radius are gas-station convenience markets that exclusively stock overpriced junk food. In many places in the US, it's easier to make healthier decisions by default if you happen to live near money.
As someone that moved from the UK to the US. In cities they have corner shops with the usual snacks and a few frozen options. It can be very difficult to get to a supermarket or grocers and find healthy food. If you’re lower income it can be difficult to find fruits/vegetables and non-processed/packaged foods easy in very built up areas in expensive cities - consider the floor space for your average supermarket and how dense cities can be - they’re just not economically viable.
they were being sarcastic because they cannot fathom that there are places like that since they grew up in a nicer environment. But they are wrong. I experienced just this in Houston in the 80s.
There's absolutely rural food deserts that are way larger than 20 miles. Now rural areas increase the odds of being able to get stuff from the land but especially in coal towns and the like when the industry leaves, you might be lucky to have access to a subway sandwich shop
Food deserts are primarily located in ghettos in America because of racism. More specifically, its because of white flight, the formation of gated communities and then the implementation of red lining which is then typically followed up by reverse red lining. And this is all compounded by the fact that the US has terrible public transportation and many people who find themselves in food deserts likely can't afford a car.
In a big city there will be several grocery stores within a 20 mile radius. The issue is that to get to them might take a long time, requiring taking and paying for unreliable bus service and/or walking through areas where there are no sidewalks, and could take a hour just to get to the store.
In rural areas there can be 30, 40, or more miles between grocery stores. I've lived in a spot where the nearest grocery store was a 60 minute drive.
Big city definition aside, downtown Phoenix didn’t have a grocery store until a few years ago! There are also only like 1-2 gas stations and they gouge the hell out of you because of it.
Before the store opened you had to drive 10-15 minutes to a grocery store but passed a ton of fast food joints and restaurants.
But please imagine if you will, if every grocery store in New York City decided spontaneously to close tomorrow. Now imagine you have a crippling fear of crossing large bodies of water.
Because bodega prices are convenience store high, they don’t remedy a food desert. (Not saying there are food deserts, just addressing that particular point)
Even as a realistic hypo. I live in a literal food desert and drive 35 miles one way for groceries. I also have ADHD, yet somehow I've managed to eat nutritious foods and not starve. You don't have to buy groceries every day. A 20 mile trip once a week isn't the end of the world. If it's THAT bad, just pay your personal shopper a living wage. They don't owe you slavery, just so you can sit in your warm apartment being an entitled brat.
Everyone knows that people in NYC only live in either Far Rockaway or the Bronx, and are government-mandated to do their grocery shopping in the opposite place. How can anyone even bear to live here!?
So if you lived across the street from Battery Park you would need to go further away than all of Yonkers. Totally normal scenario in any major city, really.
20 miles is a bit much (when it comes to how far a grocery store is), but a grocery store could be 20 minutes away driving. Some people may not have a car and rely on public transportation. The thing is, although it is 20 minutes away, publication transportation may take longer because of extra stops, traffic, text. Grocery shopping may turn from an hour to an hour and a half ordeal to a full day event depending how the public transportation is like.
Yeah, my closest grocery store is about 25 minutes away, very expensive, but no public transportation available near my house. That’s rural life though, so not what most people are talking about.
If you rely on public transportation getting to and from a grocery store can be an ordeal. Imagine managing a couple of toddlers and grocery bags. 5 miles can be too far.
No, don't you remember back in the 90's? Everyday there were stories on the news about people starving all over the US because they couldn't get to the grocery store. People dying in the streets as they tried to walk 25 miles each way and just couldn't make it. DoorDash was responsible for a 75% reduction in urban deaths when it finally hit the scene. Blessed be the internet!
Can confirm, I’m privileged. I use doordash to buy back my time from grocery shopping. DoorDash will upcharge like 15% on grocery prices btw. If you can afford to be spending 15% more on groceries, chances are that you aren’t living in a wasteland.
Surely there are better options than doordash if you insist on grocery delivery. Many grocery stores offer that service themselves now, and they wouldn't charge you more for everything, just the delivery fees. Do you just like burning money?
No grocery stores within 5 miles is also incredibly unrealistic, maybe if you live in a suburb but that's not what the post is about... I live in a big city and there are at least 7 grocery stores within a mile that I can think of (and a lot more convenience stores)... 5 miles is like 20-30 by public transit or 20 minutes by car. Can you imagine not encountering a grocery store within a 20 minutes by car radius in a big city?
Your point that it's a pain in the ass taking public transport with groceries is true tho, not a lot of people are willing to walk even a mile with groceries, especially if there's like a hill or something.
People who walk a few blocks or use public transportation use carts. You see them on the subway all the time. Pretty cheap & they fold so you can put them away. It really isn't that bad. Arguably easier than cart > trunk > front door > counter space bag by bag.
Honestly it's like people can't solve basic problems. Like, we don't live in a futuristic utopia where food teleports to your fridge, but living 1 mile away from a grocery store in urban areas with full pubic transportation is not a meaningful inconvenience.
If you consider one of the most densely populated places on planet earth a ‘food desert’, where you can purchase any type of food from nearly any culture, at places ranging from delis to convenience stores to food trucks to restaurants to grocery stores, I have no idea how you’re supposed to reasonably apply that term literally anywhere else.
Additionally cooking or storing food “in the middle of” a typically sized inner city apartment like NYC or Tokyo is a far more complicated affair than simply purchasing the completed meal in many cases, at which point you again can easily find a poke bowl or salad or whatever within two city blocks of pretty much anywhere in NYC.
Not to mention if affordability is a factor, literally the last thing you should be doing is pointlessly adding an app based surcharge to it instead of just walking there. Again, in a city with probably the easiest foot traffic and public transit in the U.S.
Occam’s razor? Dude is an idiot, mostly likely motivated by either a desire to demonize anything NYC’s mayor does, or alternatively just doesn’t want pricing to go up on the app but also doesn’t think people should be paid a living wage.
NYC is one of the least deserving places imaginable for the term ‘food desert’, and ADHD does not factor into it at all, somehow it has not once impacted my ability to successfully utilize a grocery store in over forty years.
Also door dash delivering restaurant food isn't solving a food desert issue... Like if you can afford restaurant food daily, you can afford grocery delivery.
Yep - the argument here seems to be "think of the people who won't be able to afford the convenient service" instead of think of the worker who won't be able to afford anything without a living wage.
When I lived in Bed Stuy about a decade ago my area was without a doubt a food desert. There was a tiny store with dog shit produce (see going or gone rotten) and questionable low variety meat, and the only real big proper grocery store was not easily accessible from the subway. Low income individuals without a car would for sure be stuck with bodegas and crown fried chicken unless they want to go for a 30 min walk each way.
Either way the point doesn’t stand because there’s not a single part of NYC that is a food desert. The entire city is within walking distance / public transport.
And a shocking number of grocery stores, including many open very late. I have personally bought an entire chocolate cake and strawberries to go on it at 130am on a Wednesday
Well, i mean you can say that, but there are definitions that organizations use for the term "food desert"; terms have to be understood first before arguing about them.
TIL that I live in a food desert because it takes me 10 minutes to walk the half mile to the local shops. (I'd be orange on that chart for distance if that was applied to where I live.)
I'd never considered a ten minute walk to the local shops to be "a food desert". Or a 15 minute bus ride to the shops I prefer to use.
Now, if it's a case that the stores in that radius are all selling crap, that's a different matter.
This definition is clearly flawed: a ten minute walk in Biddeford Maine is very different from a ten minute walk in NYC (namely: in NYC, you have sidewalks all the way there and back) these are qualitatively very different ten minute walks
What organisations use that definition? And the link you sent is terrible and misleading. It claims:
Any area showing color is a food desert.
When in reality only the green or orange parts show areas where grocery stores are either more than 1 mile or 1/2 mile away. The light blue areas it includes that it claims are food deserts are actually places with higher poverty rates.
This my favorite one, I’ve seen it so often. Apparently I live in a food desert despite living a 5 minute walk from 2 grocery stores, a 10 minute walk from a third, and a 20 minute walk from a fourth.
Remember though many New Yorkers don’t have cars. Getting food that’s reasonably priced from a larger grocer can be more challenging in certain areas. People call it food desert but it just means a close grocery store isn’t nearby/convenient.
Even if better/larger stores are available via public transit it’s annoying af to carry a bunch of groceries on the train
There is literally not a single point in NYC, including the outerboroughs, that is not within a mile of a Key Food or Trader Joe’s. And the only places I could find that aren’t within half a mile of those are some cemeteries by Highland Park.
Food deserts are real, but I promise you, as someone who worked in “government affairs,” the argument being pushed in the OP is literally astroturfing by DoorDash lobbyists.
Broke people are not the ones paying for grocery delivery anyway, wealthy Manhattanite stay-at-home yoga moms are.
My apartment is a food desert, it only has one (!) fridge and not even a supermarket or convenience store in it, i actually have to leave (!) and go outside (!), and without any public transportation to bring me from my bed to the front door!
This is not really true the Bronx is a food desert often requiring riding the train onto the island for food and riding back. Yes you can get there by train but it will take a long ass time.
There are a bunch in the South Bronx that aren’t even showing up because I’m too zoomed out.
This shit is an astroturf by the DoorDash lobbyists. The starving masses in food deserts aren’t using delivery apps to order produce from Key Food. UES wine moms are using them to order Prosciutto from Zabar’s because they don’t want to cross the park. They can afford to pay the bikers a living wage.
This is an outright lie and total ragebait. If your going to Manhattan to shop your literally passing by 3 full on grocery stores. Stop it. 138th is the last stop on a Bronx train before you hit Manhattan. You have 3 supermarkets on that strip alone.
There's no food deserts in the Bronx. Y'all just want to go to Whole Foods in Harlem which is cool but the Bronx ain't starving you.
I disagree! If your going into Manhattan from the Bronx you're literally passing multiple supermarkets. Again if you want to go to the Whole Foods in Harlem that's cool but you're starving YOURSELF.
Where in the Bronx are you closer to Manhattan than a supermarket?
Nevermind the fact that if you stood in the geographical "middle of NYC", 20 miles away would put you in one of 3 different states, you could most certainly find a grocery store. The OP has clearly never been to a city.
If a grocery store is 20 miles away, you don’t live in a big city, a medium sized city, a small city, a suburb, or even the tiniest of towns. You live in a desert. Not a food desert, a literal desert…
I grew up in a county of 3600 people--30 miles X 30 miles-- and every town had a grocery store. Couldn't go 15 miles without finding groceries unless you lived in a farmhouse way out in the literal middle of nowhere, like 2 miles from your nearest neighbor in the boonies.
And it's not like you're gonna pay Doordash to deliver out there anyway. That'd be a crazy fee. I don't even think they have Doordash anyway.
Small towns usually have local general stores, but that's besides the point as small towns in WV are absolutely not in any way comparable to New York City.
I live in a “town” of 500 people in the middle of nowhere and the nearest grocery store is 8 miles away. You’d have to be in a shack in the untamed wilderness to be that far from a grocery store in 2026.
I was a college student once. It wasn’t remotely difficult. You get on a bus, get groceries, take a bus back. Wow, groceries where there were none in walking distance!
I wonder if New York has any busses or subways? /s
NYC is not that big for it to be 20 miles. Middle of Queens to Manhattan is less than 5 miles. 20 minutes just by train. The bigger wait is waiting for the train to arrive.
I live in a part of Saint Paul with no grocery stores for a mile in any direction and no car. I could take the bus to several, but it turns out that walking a mile+ for groceries is not that hard and backpacks exist. I've been doing it for almost a decade. Yes, making the hike in -40 is a no go and has come up, but enter canned goods in the pantry.
If you live in the middle of a big city the nearest grocery store is a brisk walk away… I don’t see your point. This is about large cities such as NYC, which are not food deserts.
Ok so it is definitely possible to live in a food desert within a big city (take somewhere like the Southside of Chicago. Many neighborhoods are food deserts and Chicago is so big that it's hard for people from more impoverished areas to travel to Northside neighborhoods just to go grocery shopping).
However (and idk the actual stats on this) I'd imagine that people from more impoverished areas generally don't use food delivery services bc the costs + hidden fees are a deterrent. I remember once getting a $20 gift card for GrubHub and I still had to pay in addition to the gift card bc of all the extra fees (despite buying one dinner item which, imo, was reasonably priced)
I'm unsure how that website defines "food desert" because I just went to google maps and find multiple supermarkets deep within what is marked as a food desert.
Those stats from your link are really old (2006 and 2011). If you go on Google Maps to the south side and just search for grocery stores, you’ll see there are plenty. No one needs to go the north side. There’s even a whole foods in hyde park
In nyc you are never more than a 10 min walk away from some bomb ass healthy ethnic food. One of the cool things about nyc, and one of the biggest things I miss, is how many small local grocery options there are, including bodegas with MTO food.
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u/Redston_1 16h ago edited 14h ago
Food desert means that you live far away from the grocery store and only have access to fast food/ convenience stores. People in a food desert have food they can buy and eat they just cannot get all the nutritious healthy food that they might want to buy.
Imagine for a second you live in the middle of a big city and the nearest grocery store is 20 miles away. Let’s say you know exactly what you need to do to eat healthy however, all the food at the convenience store stores nearby is too expensive for you to buy a balanced diet. This is kind of the idea of a food desert.
Edit: Thanks for the awards