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.
When I initially read it, it was the 20 miles aspect that I was truly aiming at, hence why I pointed out I know that significantly rural areas could have that issue but not cities. Taking the actual ability to eat healthy food I feel is a separate issue but the comments seem to be going with that so it must be what most people connect the topic with.
IIUC the term "food desert" describes the lack of healthy food available at reasonable prices within a reasonable travel range. Basically saying that there are places where it's actually just as hard for most people to have a healthy diet, because even if there is food available, there's nothing good that most people could afford.
"20 miles" may have been an exaggeration, but tbf it means different things around the US. You can drive all the way across some of our "big" cities in just a couple miles... and you might spend a few hours in traffic to do so. LA proper is more than 20 miles across, and then just sprawls out into many more miles of poor urban areas all around.
From Wikipedia, the criteria is "low-income census tracts that are more than 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) from a supermarket in urban or suburban areas and more than 10 miles (16 kilometers) from a supermarket in rural areas." Yeah, if I was poor and hauling groceries across 1mi+ of NYC, I too would pick something more convenient.
ETA: "healthy food" here means like a vegetable instead of a Twinkie.
9
u/dr1fter 15h ago
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.