Poverty appears to be a bigger factor in poor diets than living in areas without a supermarket nearby, say Ilya Rahkovsky and Samantha Snyder of USDA’s Economic Research Service. In a 36-page report, the researchers say that living in a “low income, low-access” (LILA) area “has only a modest negative impact on the healthfulness of food purchases – a difference too small to explain much of the national disparities in diet quality and obesity.”
They note that even when LILA customers travel beyond their neighborhood to shop at supermarkets, their purchases don’t change much.
“Even after traveling to stores farther from their home, LILA area consumers tend to buy less healthy food. Thus, as the effect of living in LILA areas on diets is modest, improvements in dietary quality are likely only with a multi-pronged policy approach that addresses hardwired shopping and eating habits in addition to retail coverage,” write Rahkovsky and Snyder. At another point, they say, “As the effect of living in LILA areas on diets is modest, the dietary effect of a policy attracting supermarkets to these areas will be similarly modest.”
About 10 percent of Americans live in low income, low access areas, defined as more than a mile from a supermarket in cities and more than 10 miles in rural areas. The areas without easy access to a supermarket are sometimes called “food deserts.”
Studies in recent years have found fewer stores in areas with very poor or minority customers, says the USDA report. Others have linked a poor food environment with adverse health conditions such as obesity and associated diseases. The 2014 farm law included a $125 million Healthy Food Financing Initiative to improve access to food in underserved communities. For their study, Rahkovsky and Snyder examined food purchases over a year by more than 25,700 households.