Chains leave food deserts barren

Associated Press

ST. LOUIS

As part of Michelle Obama’s healthy eating initiative, a group of major food retailers promised in 2011 to open or expand 1,500 grocery or convenience stores in and around neighborhoods with no supermarkets by 2016. By their own count, they’re far short.

Moreover, an analysis of federal food stamp data by The Associated Press reveals that the nation’s largest chains — not just the handful involved in the first lady’s group — have since built new supermarkets in only a fraction of the neighborhoods where they’re needed most.

The Partnership for a Healthier America, which also promotes good nutrition and exercise in its anti-obesity mission, considers improving access to fresh food a key part of the solution. But the AP’s research demonstrates that major grocers overwhelmingly avoid America’s food deserts instead of trying to turn a profit in high-poverty areas.

Among the AP’s findings:

The nation’s top 75 food retailers opened almost 10,300 stores in new locations from 2011 to the first quarter of 2015, 2,434 of which were grocery stores. Take away convenience stores and “dollar stores,” which generally don’t sell fresh fruits, vegetables or meat, and barely more than 250 of the new supermarkets were in so-called food deserts, or neighborhoods without stores that offer fresh produce and meats.

As the largest supermarket chains have been slow to build in food deserts, the so-called dollar stores have multiplied rapidly. Three chains – Dollar General, Family Dollar and Dollar Tree – made up two-thirds of new stores in food deserts.

The dollar store sector is consolidating, too: Dollar Tree merged with Family Dollar this year, creating the largest dollar-store chain in the nation and in the process, less competition and less incentive to diversify what these stores offer.

“The dollar stores are popping up everywhere in the food deserts, but that doesn’t mean anything if the owners don’t give customers the opportunity for fresh produce,” said Norman Wilson Sr., a food desert activist who is pastor of a Pentecostal church in Orlando, Florida.

Excluding dollar stores and 7-Elevens, just 1.4 million of the more than 18 million people the USDA says lived in food deserts as of 2010 got a new supermarket in the past four years.

On top of all that, it’s difficult to say how many more people live in newer food deserts created by recent store closures.

The USDA considers a neighborhood a food desert if at least a fifth of the residents live in poverty and a third live more than a mile from a supermarket in urban areas, or more than 10 miles in rural areas, where residents are more likely to have cars.

Research has shown that a lack of access to healthy foods contributes to health problems, such as obesity and diabetes.