Speaker
Description
Food access varies widely depending upon the neighborhood of residence. For some neighborhoods, a designation of a food desert has been documented. Food deserts are neighborhoods that have limited access to healthy and affordable foods in the form of supermarkets or grocery stores. The United States Department of Agriculture began to produce a food desert atlas that designated tracts with this limited access to healthy food. However, their criteria for healthy food is restrictive to only large stores. This research documented a more thorough examination of food access in the low-income, low-access food desert tracts in the St. Louis MSA. The result showed fewer food desert tracts than was initially provided by the USDA. By including smaller food stores and more local options, food access is found to be much better than what was suggested by this federal agency. Additionally, healthy food was plentiful for some low-income, low-access tracts due to a diverse offering of fast-food options and sit-down restaurants. For others, the inability to access high-quality nutritious food was apparent. A variety of mapping techniques is utilized to showcase these discrepancies.
