A trip to a city grocery store seems like a small thing.
The last time you went it took an hour or so, right? You probably stuck your spouse with the kids some Saturday while you shopped, then ferried home the heavy bags by car.
Not Lesli Calderon. She might as well live in a desert. The closest grocery stores are more like mirages. No bus lines or sidewalks lead to one of the two in her neighborhood, and Calderon can't drive there because she can't afford a car. She could take a bus to the other, but she can't afford the food.
So when Calderon's cupboards run bare, she hops a bus in Northeast Portland's Cully neighborhood.
And she rides it.
And rides it.
Until she reaches Clackamas County, and WinCo, 10 miles away.
It can take four hours, round trip.
When getting to market takes this much effort, epidemiologists consider it a threat to our collective health. Where we live determines where we buy food, which influences what we eat, factors into whether we're fat and can seal whether, someday, we get diabetes or have a heart attack.
Low-income and minority families, prone to obesity and dietary-related diseases, are also more likely to live in communities where nutritious food is hard to come by, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation reports. These are otherwise known as "food deserts." Nationally, the typical low-income neighborhood has 30 percent fewer supermarkets than higher-income neighborhoods.
Parts of outer Northeast Portland popped out as having particularly poor access to food when the Coalition for a Livable Future analyzed grocery store locations using 2004 data. "You have people literally living off of Plaid Pantries," says Brendan Finn, chief of staff to Portland City Commissioner Dan Saltzman, who oversees the Office of Sustainable Development.
Public health advocates have pushed their concerns to the fore of the urban planning agenda. For the first time, planners will make food access a component of Portland's comprehensive plan, which guides physical and economic development and is being revised.
Portlanders live in a city that pays attention to food's economic and environmental repercussions. We love our farmers markets and natural-food stores, and many Portlanders who care about food and equity want more. But will that improve the diets of the poorest and least healthy?
"I don't think anybody here thinks we have the answer," says Noelle Dobson, a project director with Community Health Partnership who focuses on health, design and chronic disease.
"What we do have figured out is that we need to try harder," she said. "We can tell people to buy fresh fruits and vegetables until we're blue in the face, but if we don't address the social barriers of cost and availability, it's just not going to happen."
Full Story and Video at: http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2008/11/living_in_a_food_desert.html
