There are organic cookies I like which I cannot find in my predominantly working- and lower-middle class neighborhood here in the Bronx. When we lived in middle- and upper-middle class Kew Gardens I could walk up the block to the local organic market, and buy them as long as they were in stock. (They often were, and the shopkeeper could easily order them if they were out.) I thought about taking the train back to Queens to buy them from that shoppe, but then I did the math. If I order them from Amazon.com (something I hate doing because of Amazon’s abysmal record on how they treat their warehouse workers, most of whom are temps) I will pay $3.50 in shipping and handling. In contrast, a round trip on the subway is $5.50 in fares. I’ll actually save money ordering them online! That’s nuts.
This makes me think about how much more expensive it is for people to have to travel out of their neighborhoods for quality food, which keeps people from doing it, which affects their diet, which affects their health, which affects every other part of their lives. If it applies to a junk food like cookies, it applies even more for things like fruits, vegetables, non-GMO foods, fish, poultry, red meat, milk that does not have antibiotics in it, and so on. I can get all of those things in my neighborhood (just not organic things, which are more of an upper-middle-class, hipster thing), but there are neighborhoods which do not have large grocery stores or butchers where they can buy those things. We even have a farmer’s market that sets up near the subway every week. What do the people in neighborhoods without those things do?
They go without. They buy less healthy options in a bodega/corner store. They buy fast food. And they shoulder the judgment of the rest of us for not making healthier food choices.
The sad irony is not lost on me.
2 responses to “Access to Quality Food As A Social Issue”
It has not been until the last few years that I’ve learned about this. And I can attest that even in smaller cities (like the one I grew up in) that this is true. There easily two grocery stores within a 10 minute drive of my parents’ house, but there are no grocery stores on the lower income area of town and instead, two fast food restaurants. The quality of food is indeed political. It’s disgusting that grocery stores hold the same judgmental stance of what those with lower income would spend their money on (which I was told is part of the reason they veer away from those areas) as the mainstream discourse/opinion.
I’ve only known about it a few years myself. It’s one of those “what has been seen cannot be unseen” things; now I see it all over.