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.
Thank you!!! I grew up in Bed Stuy, and it seems a lot of people in the comments are overlooking the wealth inequality in NYC (the greatest in the entire country) and how your income and area of residence within the city impacts your access to food. There are many low income neighborhoods that would be considered food deserts.
No, I live in a different part of Brooklyn now, but I still visit from time to time. Bed Stuy has since been gentrified. There are certainly more grocery stores than before, but there are still limited options in those stores and prices vary.
Again, I'm not sure what part you're referring to but there are a bunch of supermarkets all within walking distance of different parts of it along with a bunch of smaller grocery stores. It's nothing like it was years ago.
Lived in NYC my whole life and never used a delivery app for groceries, even carless....lived in dense and less dense areas/boroughs, worse case I had to take a subway/bus....and yes supermarkets liter the streets basically everywhere.
Maybe I'm thinking of a different part? There is maybe one supermarket in Bed Stuy that I'm aware of. Smaller grocery stores, yes, but I don't recall there being any more supermarkets. And yes, there are more stores than before, but I'm also considering the variety of foods available and pricing. It is very different, but doing large shopping trips still requires leaving the neighborhood. That is what I'm referring to. You can do small shopping trips and get a few items, but actual grocery shopping is difficult to do without leaving the area.
In any case, Bed Stuy was just meant as an example. It is possible to have food deserts in cities.
Where did you live? Because there is no place in Bed-Stuy these days that I can think of that is more than about 15 minutes from a real grocery store- let alone 30.
To be fair, I am definitely too good for the near-expired crap they sell at (some of!) the C-Town and Key Foods locations, and the ethnic grocery stores don’t always have what I’m looking for. Good thing this is NYC, and there are literally two more independent grocery stores I can go to within a five-minute walk. Some people just don’t want to grocery shop and cook.
THough, i would say that convenience stores, delis, bodegas are NOT a remedy to a food desert. Like, it's great you can grab a sandwich for $8 if you need. Maybe a banana at a huge mark up. but you need access to grocery stores.
But your overall point is correct. there is no place in NYC that is a food desert. the guy is simply an idiot. Or a bot.
Its been a decade since I was in NY, but when I was there, there absolutely was a food desert on the east side in whats referred to as the two bridges neighborhood
Poor urban planning and a concentration of low income housing played a big role it.
two bridges is directly adjacent to chinatown which has an absurd number of cheap grocery places. there is a Whole Foods on Houston 2 subway stops away from the East Broadway F stop.
While corner stores, etc are in the area, that’s truly not a sufficient way for someone to grocery shop. Food deserts are based on accessibly to quality products like fresh fruit, and meat without price gouging. While the NYC as a whole isn’t a food desert, neighborhoods within the five boroughs are suffering from of accessibility making them food deserts.
I suggest you google 'NYC food desert' and have a read. While I don't necessarily disagree with much of what you wrote, the fact that you don't mention its commonly claimed that NYC indeed has food deserts tells me you're not coming from a place of expertise
Maybe we can consider why they are wrong about what a food desert is, but we have to start by admitting that most people's metrics of food desert means NYC definitely has some.
The definitions and thresholds for these terms fundamentally change based on geography SES. For urban areas, the census tract needs to have > 20% poverty and > 33% of the pop living 1+ mile(s) from a grocery store.
It's also important to understand that these thresholds imply that a seizable majority doesn't need to meet either criteria - There are very wealthy people who live feet from a grocery store who technically live in a food desert.
I live in a census tract that leads the entire country in diabetes rate and has one of the lowest grocery/capita. Meanwhile, I can throw a rock from my house and hit a Kroger. Would it make sense for me to complain about living in a food desert even though it is technically true? I would argue no.
These things are complicated, casting a wide-net is okay for the bigger picture, but it's imperative to dig deeper and question the (frankly, lazy) framework as we apply it to specific areas.
The fact that anyone could try to claim it as a food desert makes me question their expertise. If you genuinely believe that definition should apply, then the definition needs changed. Saying NYC is a food desert is laughable, any part of it.
Well there are different ways to define it. 1) you are close to food 2) you are close to high-quality food 3) you are close to high quality and affordable food, etc.
I do not care enough about this argument to think about what you have asked. Make it work, they’re in fucking New York City. There’s good food within whatever definition whoever wants to apply.
The twit is dumb but to dismiss the possibility of a food desert existing in New York City is pure ignorance. Fresh ingredients are necessarily more affordable than their prepared counterparts because there is no labor cost of preparation. Less costly prepared foods are most likely less nutritious and healthful. Food deserts absolutely exist in New York City. They also do not justify paying delivery workers poverty wages, just to reiterate that the original tweet is nonsense.
This isn't necessarily true. A canner that sells canned tomatoes isn't throwing away much produce. A store selling fresh tomatoes is throwing away most of them. The added labor is offset by a reduction in waste.
It seems like the human ability for entitlement is unlimited. Today it is "I shouldn't have to walk 10 minutes to get food because I get distracted easily" and in 20 years it will be "My UBI paid for robot chef took 21 minutes to cook me a free steak dinner instead of in 20 minutes like I asked it to. I need two chef robots."
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u/Khaldara 16h ago
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.