Food Deserts

As government funding for programs that make fresh fruits and vegetables available to low-income women and young children get cut, Sarah Parsons asks how to make the sustainable food movement less elitist.

April 6, 2012 - Good

The New Jersey Partnership for Healthy Kids is leading an effort to make time for physical activity and put healthy food on children's plates, Beth Fitzgerald reports.

March 23, 2012 - NJ Spotlight

Lecturers call race a "surrogate" for socioeconomic factors that determine health outcomes, reports Beth Fitzgerald.

February 22, 2012 - NJ Spotlight

Mogro is a new for-profit company in New Mexico that is targeting neighborhoods with little access to healthy food with temperature-controlled grocery trucks.

June 9, 2011 - GOOD Magazine

The "food deserts" problem is receiving heightened attention following the release of the USDA's locator map. But this analysis relies on the suspect premise that suburban supermarkets are superior to small, walkable urban foodsellers.

May 10, 2011 - Streetsblog Capitol Hill

James Griffioen debunks the myth that his hometown is in want of grocery stores.

January 29, 2011 - Urbanophile

The rural Midwest produces much of our nation's food supply, and yet small towns in the heartland and around America are increasingly and ironically becoming food deserts - places where citizens have little access to fresh, healthy foods.

January 25, 2011 - Grist

With new fast food restaurants temporarily banned in South L.A. and few new sources of food coming into the area, one local architecture professor set his students loose to work on ideas for a small urban farm.

November 24, 2010 - Los Angeles Times

With suburban markets saturated, discount food chains are moving into urban food deserts. While this may be convenient for residents, some are concerned that such stores will do little for local economies.

October 15, 2010 - Huffington Post

A new report from The Los Angeles Food Policy Task Force calls for the government to take steps to increase accessibility to local, healthy food in urban areas.

October 6, 2010 - Good

Activists who want to solve the problem of "food deserts" in underserved areas push for co-ops and and independent grocery stores. But would large chains like WalMart be a better solution?

October 5, 2010 - Grist

Online tools designed to connect local farmers with consumers are helping sustain the local food and urban agriculture movements.

September 16, 2010 - Next American City

Grist's food editor visits Detroit, where the lack of grocery stores has inspired a number of innovative, locally-grown food projects.

September 16, 2010 - Grist

A proposed development on a vacant lot in ailing Cleveland could connect locals with a little-known asset of their community - a cluster of food wholesalers.

July 27, 2010 - The Cleveland Plain Dealer

To survive, neighborhoods need to be commercially viable. A group called the Food Trust believes grocery stores are a good starting point for creating that economic climate.

May 20, 2010 - The Atlantic

A major grocer in Ohio is trying to keep some of its smaller stores open in areas that would otherwise be food deserts. But profits are hard to come by, and stores continue to move out of town.

May 18, 2010 - The Cincinnati Enquirer

Jewish groups in Los Angeles are taking on the lack of healthy groceries in certain parts of the city, the so-called "food deserts" of LA.

March 22, 2010 - The Los Angeles Times

In the Bronx, Brooklyn, and even the Upper East Side, rooftop farming is making inroads. The City Greens profiles a handful of these urban pioneers.

March 19, 2010 - The City Greens

A coalition of community groups in L.A. has banded together to address the lack of access to healthy food in sections of East and South Central Los Angeles.

October 12, 2009 - The Christian Science Monitor