{"id":4513,"date":"2011-11-04T05:00:45","date_gmt":"2011-11-04T09:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/?p=4513"},"modified":"2011-11-02T07:22:48","modified_gmt":"2011-11-02T11:22:48","slug":"food-deserts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/4513","title":{"rendered":"Food Deserts: Health Impacts and a Short Reading List"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From an <a title=\"Good Food and Bad: Just Deserts\" href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/node\/21534806\" target=\"_blank\">article<\/a> in this week&#8217;s issue of <em>The Economist<\/em>:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">This part of Chicago\u2019s South Side is in the heart of one of America\u2019s many food deserts. These are notable not for the absence of food, but for the kind of food available. Though crisps, sweets and doughnuts are easy to come by, an apple is a rare commodity. Yet all the evidence shows that poor access to quality food results in a higher risk of obesity, diabetes and cancer &#8212; and more avoidable deaths.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Although cynics might argue that the market gives people the food they deserve, research published this month in the\u00a0<em>New England Journal of Medicine\u00a0<\/em>suggests otherwise. During the 1990s, when the American government paid for around 1,800 women to move out of public housing, the women who had moved showed a 20% lower rate of obesity and diabetes than those who had not. In other words, their improved environment (which many assume would include better shops) led to their better health.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Neighborhoods, Obesity, and Diabetes -- A Randomized Social Experiment\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nejm.org\/doi\/full\/10.1056\/NEJMsa1103216\" target=\"_blank\">Here<\/a> is a link to the <em>New England Journal of Medicine<\/em> article by Ludwig et al., which relies on a randomized controlled trial. <a title=\"Food Desert\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Food_desert\" target=\"_blank\">Here<\/a> is the Wikipedia page discussing food deserts.<\/p>\n<p>This <a title=\"Fafchamps and Hill (AJAE, 2005)\" href=\"http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/pss\/3697909\" target=\"_blank\">article<\/a> by Marcel Fafchamps and Ruth Vargas Hill lists many scholarly references on food deserts. In particular, I would check out those by Alcaly and Klevorick (1971), Caraher et al. (1998), Goodman (1968), Whelan et al. (2002), and Wrigley et al. (2002).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From an article in this week&#8217;s issue of The Economist: This part of Chicago\u2019s South Side is in the heart of one of America\u2019s many&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/4513\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Food Deserts: Health Impacts and a Short Reading List<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,12,69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food","category-policy","category-poverty","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1gPg8-1aN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4513"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4513\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4553,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4513\/revisions\/4553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}