In short, it fails to explain the phenomenon:
Policymakers are scrambling to find a solution to our growing waistlines. Some are targeting America’s “food deserts” — areas lacking in grocery stores.
As first lady Michelle Obama explained last March, “families wind up buying their groceries at the local gas station or convenience store, places that offer few, if any, healthy options.”
[. . .]
The U.S. Department of Agriculture defines a food desert as a low-income census tract where a large number of residents are more than a mile from a grocery store.
By this definition, 13.5 million Americans are supposedly McVictimized by food deserts. That’s less than 4.5 percent of the U.S. population, yet roughly two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese.
You don’t need a Ph.D. in mathematics to understand that food deserts are, at best, a very small aspect of a vast problem.
“families wind up buying their groceries at the local gas station or convenience store, places that offer few, if any, healthy options.”
For a chick who was on the honor roll, took AP classes in high school, graduated from Princeton cum laude the missus sure doesn’t talk like she’s got a lot of sense.
Or she’s dumbing it down for us proles. Either is likely, I suppose.
Comment by Brian Dunbar — July 21, 2011 @ 17:49
While the USDA determination somehow includes the food paradise of central Austin as a “food desert,” actual food deserts like Detroit are the direct result of a half-century of one-party Democrat city gov’t.
Comment by Tom Kelley — July 22, 2011 @ 00:08
But the USDA has carefully, scientifically determined the criteria by which food deserts are defined, and every “red” state automatically qualifies!
If you and your neighbours had the misfortune of voting for anyone other than Democratic candidates, you clearly are suffering from false consciousness, which indicates that your diet is deficient in brain-nourishing vitamins. Therefore, a desert is what you inhabit.
Q.E.D, y’see?
Comment by Nicholas — July 22, 2011 @ 00:25