{"id":10354,"date":"2011-07-21T10:06:05","date_gmt":"2011-07-21T14:06:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=10354"},"modified":"2011-07-21T10:06:05","modified_gmt":"2011-07-21T14:06:05","slug":"the-food-desert-theory-of-us-obesity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/07\/21\/the-food-desert-theory-of-us-obesity\/","title":{"rendered":"The &#8220;food desert&#8221; theory of US obesity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In short, <a href=\"http:\/\/washingtonexaminer.com\/opinion\/columnists\/2011\/07\/manhattan-moment-cutting-food-desert-myth-down-size#ixzz1Sjx1ZYer\" target=\"_blank\">it fails to explain the phenomenon<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Policymakers are scrambling to find a solution to our growing waistlines. Some are targeting America&#8217;s &#8220;food deserts&#8221; &mdash; areas lacking in grocery stores.<\/p>\n<p>As first lady Michelle Obama explained last March, &#8220;families wind up buying their groceries at the local gas station or convenience store, places that offer few, if any, healthy options.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>[. . .]<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>By this definition, 13.5 million Americans are supposedly McVictimized by food deserts. That&#8217;s less than 4.5 percent of the U.S. population, yet roughly two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese.<\/p>\n<p>You don&#8217;t need a Ph.D. in mathematics to understand that food deserts are, at best, a very small aspect of a vast problem.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In short, it fails to explain the phenomenon: Policymakers are scrambling to find a solution to our growing waistlines. Some are targeting America&#8217;s &#8220;food deserts&#8221; &mdash; areas lacking in grocery stores. As first lady Michelle Obama explained last March, &#8220;families wind up buying their groceries at the local gas station or convenience store, places that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[74,66,13],"tags":[150,91],"class_list":["post-10354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food","category-health-science","category-usa","tag-obesity","tag-poverty"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-2H0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10354"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10355,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10354\/revisions\/10355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}