Food Deserts' Dwindling Defenders

While there has been no official administration response to the New York Times’ food desert myth-busting story, there a few lonely voices stranded in the rhetorical wasteland, making weak attempts to salvage the concept or at least shift the message.

 

One of those voices is that of food policy researcher Mari Gallagher, who according to the Chicago Tribune "popularized the term 'food desert.'" Gallagher said she welcomed the two research studies but attacked the New York Times reporter’s "sloppy job of getting the facts straight." Gallagher faulted the article for giving "the inaccurate impression that food access and the concept of food deserts does not matter." Well, if the concept of food deserts is a false one, it matters only as an example of misleading propaganda that uses poverty as an excuse to expand government’s size and power.

In a real desert, you don't get fat. You starve.

Another food-desert clinger is Sam Kass, a healthy food policy guru/assistant chef for the White House. In an interview with The Root, Kass argues that the administration never claimed that simply building more grocery stores would solve the problem, and that more government programs will be needed. It’s classic liberal thinking: if one wasteful program doesn’t work—or, in this case, addresses a made-up problem—we should deploy several more wasteful programs.

 

The Root interviewer writes that Kass is “unconcerned” about public criticism of the food-desert initiative. His defense is basically a rehashing of talking points: "'I think there were attempts to paint this effort as something that it's not. This is a bipartisan effort that has support from all sectors of society,’ he said, adding that everybody has a stake when one in three Americans are on track to have diabetes by 2050 if nothing changes." Yes, we are all in this together and the administration has nothing but good intentions, so nobody could possibly have a legitimate criticism.

 

Then there’s Sarah Parsons, a writer at the progressive-leaning activist organization/media outfit Good. Parsons’ May 2^nd article "Beyond the Food Desert: Why We Can't Get Healthy Foods in Poor Communities" somewhat concedes the weakness of the food desert argument, calling it a "puzzle." In her follow-up column on May 8^th, Parsons picks the food desert meme right back up again, writing that “more than 20 million people live in food deserts,” etc. Apparently she hasn’t received word from headquarters to drop the whole food desert thing, so she’ll continue just have to continue as if nothing happened—even though liberals are always supposed to bow before the latest science!

 

Like Kass and Gallagher, Parsons tries to shift away from the old message that wiping out food deserts is central to the obesity/poverty link to a new message that it is only one part of the big-government solution. Parsons says another factor is “a lack of access to exercise. Unlike their more affluent counterparts, low-income neighborhoods aren’t flush with playgrounds, tennis courts, parks, and gyms. Poor communities also tend to be more dangerous than those of higher socioeconomic status, so the public exercise options that are available may go unused for fear of violence.”

 

Fear of violence—by animals rather than other people—was what led to a recent HHS boondoggle in Nashville, in which money from an anti-obesity slush fund was used to spay animals because the local citizens where supposedly people too scared of stray dogs to go jogging. To make the episode more ironic, free pizza was served at the community meet-and-greets that promoted the anti-obesity program. Has anyone in the government ever heard of exercising indoors?

The nanny-staters want the power to magically deliver good food and "access to exercise" right to the doorsteps of the country's poor. Meanwhile in the real world, the supposed link between obesity and poverty just took another hit: "Contrary to popular belief, many healthy foods are no more expensive than junk food, according to a large new government analysis."

The reality is that everyone at every level has to make choices within their individual situation. It’s not that “We Can't Get Healthy Foods in Poor Communities” (to quote the title of Parsons’ article), it’s that it’s we can’t make people eat it. Human nature is funny that way--and progressive food nannies don’t seem to get it.