The Public Health Effects of Food Deserts PDF Download

Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309137284
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 114

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Book Description
In the United States, people living in low-income neighborhoods frequently do not have access to affordable healthy food venues, such as supermarkets. Instead, those living in "food deserts" must rely on convenience stores and small neighborhood stores that offer few, if any, healthy food choices, such as fruits and vegetables. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) and National Research Council (NRC) convened a two-day workshop on January 26-27, 2009, to provide input into a Congressionally-mandated food deserts study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service. The workshop, summarized in this volume, provided a forum in which to discuss the public health effects of food deserts.

Author: Jonathan Crush
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319435671
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
This book investigates food security and the implications of hyper-urbanisation and rapid growth of urban populations in Africa. By means of a series of case studies involving African cities of various sizes, it argues that, while the concept of food security holds value, it needs to be reconfigured to fit the everyday realities and distinctive trajectory of urbanisation in the region. The book goes on to discuss the urban context, where food insecurity is more a problem of access and changing consumption patterns than of insufficient food production. In closing, it approaches food insecurity in Africa as an increasingly urban problem that requires different responses from those applied to rural populations.

Author: Paula Dutko
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Food security
Languages : en
Pages : 30

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Book Description
Introd. -- Literature -- Method for defining and measuring food deserts -- Descriptive analyses -- Results: comparing food desert tracts with all other tracts -- Changes in food desert tract characteristics over time -- Regression analysis: methodology -- Conclusion -- References.

Author: Michele Ver Ploeg
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
ISBN: 1437921345
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
The Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 directed the U.S. Dept. of Agr. to conduct a 1-year study to assess the extent of areas with limited access to affordable and nutritious food, identify characteristics and causes of such areas, consider how limited access affects local populations, and outline recommend. to address the problem. This report presents the findings of the study, which include results from two conferences of national and internat. authorities on food deserts and a set of research studies. It also includes reviews of existing literature, a national-level assessment of access to large grocery stores and supermarkets, analysis of the economic and public health effects of limited access, and a discussion of existing policy interventions. Illus.

Author: Peter Ladner
Publisher: New Society Publishers
ISBN: 1550924885
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
Our reliance on industrial agriculture has resulted in a food supply riddled with hidden environmental, economic and health care costs and beset by rising food prices. With only a handful of corporations responsible for the lion's share of the food on our supermarket shelves, we are incredibly vulnerable to supply chain disruption. The Urban Food Revolution provides a recipe for community food security based on leading innovations across North America. The author draws on his political and business experience to show that we have all the necessary ingredients to ensure that local, fresh sustainable food is affordable and widely available. He describes how cities are bringing food production home by: Growing community through neighborhood gardening, cooking and composting programs Rebuilding local food processing, storage and distribution systems Investing in farmers markets and community supported agriculture Reducing obesity through local fresh food initiatives in schools, colleges and universities. Ending inner-city food deserts Producing food locally makes people healthier, alleviates poverty, creates jobs, and makes cities safer and more beautiful. The Urban Food Revolution is an essential resource for anyone who has lost confidence in the global industrial food system and wants practical advice on how to join the local food revolution.

Author: Robert L. Shewfelt
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319453947
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
It has become popular to blame the American obesity epidemic and many other health-related problems on processed food. Many of these criticisms are valid for some processed-food items, but many statements are overgeneralizations that unfairly target a wide range products that contribute to our health and well-being. In addition, many of the proposed dangers allegedly posed by eating processed food are exaggerations based on highly selective views of experimental studies. We crave simple answers to our questions about food, but the science behind the proclamations of food pundits is not nearly as clear as they would have you believe. This book presents a more nuanced view of the benefits and limitations of food processing and exposes some of the tricks both Big Food and its critics use to manipulate us to adopt their point of view. Food is a source of enjoyment, a part of our cultural heritage, a vital ingredient in maintaining health, and an expression of personal choice. We need to make those choices based on credible information and not be beguiled by the sophisticated marketing tools of Big Food nor the ideological appeals and gut feelings of self-appointed food gurus who have little or no background in nutrition.

Author: Nuno Domingos
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0857857045
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
At a time when the relationship between 'the country' and 'the city' is in flux worldwide, the value and meanings of food associated with both places continue to be debated. Building upon the foundation of Raymond Williams' classic work, The Country and the City, this volume examines how conceptions of the country and the city invoked in relation to food not only reflect their changing relationship but have also been used to alter the very dynamics through which countryside and cities, and the food grown and eaten within them, are produced and sustained. Leading scholars in the study of food offer ethnographic studies of peasant homesteads, family farms, community gardens, state food industries, transnational supermarkets, planning offices, tourist boards, and government ministries in locales across the globe. This fascinating collection provides vital new insight into the contested dynamics of food and will be key reading for upper-level students and scholars of food studies, anthropology, history and geography.

Author: Cathy Harris
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781545408681
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 124

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Book Description
This book not only lays out several action plans to gain access to good, clean, organic foods, but it will help all family members gain access to job and business opportunities, while they eliminate food deserts in their communities. Face it we will never get back to totally living off the land like our ancestors did, but families must come together today for the sake of future generations. We need to seriously look at solutions because this is the first generation that will not outlive their parents. However, there are economically empowered ways we can feed, clothe and shelter our own families. Food is not always only about the most expedient way to suppress hunger. Many community organizations have long understood this and believe that food access and quality is tied to both racial and economic justice. Over the past few years we have heard quite a bit about food deserts, or high poverty areas where a lack of grocery stores makes it difficult for residents to purchase fresh food. However, we know far less about the food realities of people who live near stores where fresh food is sold, but because of their limited incomes, they simply cannot afford it. Affordable healthy food is an issue of both equity and justice that disproportionally affects working-class and poor people of color in cities and rural areas. Reducing the economic necessity for some to rely so heavily on food that is unhealthy, is not only a tool for fighting health concerns, there are other benefits too. Time and time again it shows when many schools team up with healthy venues and swap out soda machines and offer instead -- juices, water and low-sugar energy drinks and also prepared meals entirely free of additives and chemicals, but with abundant amounts of fresh fruit, vegetables and whole-grain breads, this have led to reduced behavioral problems, higher grades, lower expulsion rates, decreases in the use of ADD prescription drugs, and teachers are reporting that the students were more attentive and could concentrate for longer periods of time. Gaining access to clean, sustainability, grown food is a basic human right so we need venues to offer education to inspire family members to live healthy lives, by offering hands-on education in urban farming, sustainability, and nutrition and this is what this book will do.

Author: Reid Ewing
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317240030
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 170

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Book Description
Across the nation, the debate over metropolitan sprawl and its impact has become pivotal to urban planning. A decade and a half ago, Smart Growth America and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sought to raise the level of the debate by sponsoring groundbreaking research to quantitatively measure sprawl and its quality-of-life impacts. The resulting measures are widely used in urban research and public health. Costs of Sprawl provides a panoramic guide to urban form in America, measures sprawl for metropolitan areas, urbanized areas, and counties, and studies the relationship between sprawl and quality-of-life outcomes. From this preliminary investigation, it looks like the costs of sprawl are varied and substantial, and the alternative of compact development is far superior. An essential read for researchers, planners, urban designers, policy makers, and smart growth advocates in the U.S. and abroad, this book provides a comprehensive and detailed analysis of one of the most critical issues in planning today.

Author: Mark Winne
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807047317
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
This powerful call to arms offers a realistic vision for getting locally produced, healthy food onto everyone’s table, “[blending] a passion for sustainable living with compassion for the poor” (Dr. Jane Goodall) In Closing the Food Gap, food activist and journalist Mark Winne poses questions too often overlooked in our current conversations around food: What about those people who are not financially able to make conscientious choices about where and how to get food? And in a time of rising rates of both diabetes and obesity, what can we do to make healthier foods available for everyone? To address these questions, Winne tells the story of how America’s food gap has widened since the 1960s, when domestic poverty was “rediscovered,” and how communities have responded with a slew of strategies and methods to narrow the gap, including community gardens, food banks, and farmers’ markets. The story, however, is not only about hunger in the land of plenty and the organized efforts to reduce it; it is also about doing that work against a backdrop of ever-growing American food affluence and gastronomical expectations. With the popularity of Whole Foods and increasingly common community-supported agriculture (CSA), wherein subscribers pay a farm so they can have fresh produce regularly, the demand for fresh food is rising in one population as fast as rates of obesity and diabetes are rising in another. Over the last three decades, Winne has found a way to connect impoverished communities experiencing these health problems with the benefits of CSAs and farmers’ markets; in Closing the Food Gap, he explains how he came to his conclusions. With tragically comic stories from his many years running a model food organization, the Hartford Food System in Connecticut, alongside fascinating profiles of activists and organizations in communities across the country, Winne addresses head-on the struggles to improve food access for all of us, regardless of income level.