Will Enriching Park Hill’s Food Desert Reduce Obesity?
By, Angela Tran
Med-Fit, PLLC
Park Hill is one of Colorado’s most notorious “food deserts.” A food desert is an urban or rural area with a predominantly poor population that has little access to healthy fresh food. Urban deserts have been implicated as key factors in causing obesity and related health disorders, such as diabetes.
Park Hill is one of the most severe—and most researched—food deserts in the state, with only one grocery store to serve the neighborhood’s 55,000 residents. However, that may soon change. A Walgreens offering groceries—including fresh produce—opening this June and the groundbreaking this summer on an organic cooperative grocery will give the neighborhood two more grocery options. But will that impact the neighborhood’s obesity rate?
Food Desert Theory
Food deserts are accused of contributing to obesity and diabetes because poor residents are unable to travel the necessary distance to purchase fresh food at grocery stores. Instead, they rely on foods sold at convenience stores and fast-food restaurants, which are plentiful in these areas. This leads to a diet high in salt, sugar, and fat, but low in many essential nutrients.
Problems with Food Desert Theory
There have always been problems with food desert theory. First, a 2008 US Department of Agriculture Study that pointed out that a very small percentage of households lived in food deserts but did not have access to a vehicle. Those results were confirmed with updated findings last year.
Also last year, two studies poked more holes in the food desert theory. First, a California researcher looked at detailed data for 8,000 kindergartners and found that lower income students lived in neighborhoods with high numbers of fast food restaurants, convenience stores and grocery stores. She concluded, “differential exposure to food outlets does not independently explain weight gain over time in this sample of elementary school aged children.”
Another study published last year looked at fifth and eighth graders’ access to food. Its conclusion: “No consistent evidence was found . . . to support the hypothesis that improved access to large supermarkets results in lower youth BMI; or that greater exposure to fast food restaurants, convenience stores and small food stores increases BMI.”
Why Food Deserts Are Only Part of the Problem
Science does suggest that food deserts do contribute to the problem of obesity in the US, but that there are larger problems. For example, a study of food deserts and food oases in Boston suggests that Americans in both types of areas have similar shopping habits.
Combatting the obesity crisis in Park Hill and the US will require more than making sure people have access to healthy foods. Speaking of her own successful weight loss, neighborhood resident Mary Ellen Bley said her key was to “use the power I have within me and my own control of my life to make the choices over what I eat or do not eat.” Like Bley, Park Hill residents who want to lose weight need to add physical activity to their routines and change their shopping, cooking, and eating habits. All this begins with a personal commitment to change and seeking out the support necessary to accomplish that change.
Angela Tran can be reached at Med-Fit Medical Weight Loss Clinic, denverweightlossclinic.com or 303-586-3943.