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Comment by nostromo | Hacker News Reader

> His research focused on urban Food Deserts and studied how the lack of access to healthy food nearby restricted diets to that available in convenience stores (chips, soda, etc).

I hear this often but always wonder which way the causation arrow flows.

Do "food deserts" cause unhealthy eating? Or do groups of consumers that prefer unhealthy eating create "food deserts" with their purchasing decisions?

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In the past 10 years or so, the notion that unhealthy eating and food deserts are related has been refuted in multiple articles and studies. Here are links to some of the more popular ones.

[1] NPR "The Myth of the Food Desert": http://www.npr.org/2010/12/15/132076786/the-root-the-myth-of...

[2] New York Times "Pairing of Food Deserts and Obesity Challenged in Studies": http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/health/research/pairing-of...

[3] The Atlantic "Do Food Deserts Cause Poor Eating?": https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/11/food-de...

It does seem fairly obvious that it is lifestyle choice and like-minded cultural group bubbles as opposed to not having anything but garbage to eat nearby.

I'm not sure it has to be quite that binary. Certain areas of cities may be unattractive to better markets for a variety of reasons. However, I had the same thought you had. I'm not sure dropping a Whole Foods into an area with poor food options today is going to be a panacea that suddenly makes everyone eat healthy home-cooked meals. For example, this piece [1] presents a fairly mixed picture on whether new shopping options improve outcomes.

[1] http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/takes-grocery-store-elim...

Whole Foods is absurdly expensive, though. Even after I became an engineer I didn't understand why I should pay like 3 bucks a pound for broccoli when I can get it for a buck a pound at the local Mexican/Chinese Shop (99 Ranch or ma and pa).

I was being somewhat hyperbolic. Obviously there are any number of fairly inexpensive ethnic markets that carry fresh produce and meat in many cities.

(I actually think that Whole Foods is a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to pricing but it's certainly not inexpensive even for a selective shopper.)

That's a better question: does dropping a cheap ethnic produce market into a neighbourhood that didn't have any cheap produce nearby before improve health outcomes?

Eating habits are cultural. People used to eating mostly cereal and bread throughout the day aren't suddenly going to start vegetables because vegetables drop in price and become more readily available and appealing for consumption. Humans are creatures of habit and social momentum.

If you want a good laugh, read this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/nutrition/comments/60vk7j/need_advi...

I laughed. Eating habits are stable in adulthood. I've known exactly one person to change theirs for more than a couple years.

What if in their neighborhood there are new restaurants with cheap, plant-based foods too? And if packaged food with refined sugars (cereals) and unhealthy oils got more expensive at the same time?

Humans can change their diets. It would help to be subsidizing healthy foods instead of refined sugars.

You can find deals in WFs. Just have to do some exploring.

I wish we had more New Leaf markets around, but it's kind of a local Santa Cruz-area thing.

And don't let the "Whole Foods" name fool you either, lots of food there isn't healthy at all.

This is a new one

hey, I get all my organic ice cream and craft spirits from there.

You can buy junk food from almost any market, but WF is great because you can assume that everything they have is of reasonable quality, that their meat + fish is reasonably more sustainable / quality-controlled than elsewhere, that their produce is reasonably fresh, etc. It's more about saving time from not having to research every apple farm and figure out their distribution networks when I just want an apple. Also, their return policy is super generous ("I bought this brand and I actually don't like it" = money back), their lines move quickly (sometimes Safeway is a 30min wait), they're rarely sold out of things, and they have some higher-end products which are hard to find elsewhere (I like some fancy cheeses and cured meats). They have some of the same stuff at other places, sometimes for less money, but it's never more convenient or a one-stop-shop.

I've heard of a couple studies that say that the unhealthy eating is a result of consumers in the area not having either the time and/or the money to make better decisions. If you're working 2 jobs you may find yourself less able to make healthy decisions. In my more self-imposed case, I know that I wasn't able to eat healthy while pursuing an EE/physics degree while working an engineering internship. I was either sleeping or working and there was rarely time to prepare my own food or even go to the grocery store to get the ingredients.

This is not a scientific answer, but my perspective is that healthy food is more expensive, therefore purveyors of healthy food tend to avoid poor areas. It's not so much the consumer's "choice" to buy these products, but their inability to purchase or lack of knowledge that fresh foods may extend their lives.

Edit: Another issue affecting these consumers is that they may not have as much time to cook as a family with 2 parents working 1 job each.

Healthy food isn't very expensive if you're smart about it (it requires a bit of education and understanding nutrition). I live off of rice, beans, spinach, pita bread, whole grain pasta, peanut butter and the cheapest veggies I can find. I spend about 20$CAD a week on groceries.

Where's the steak? =) The day someone defines what "healthy food" actually is, or what subsets of food will suffice, will be the day people realize it can be had for as much or less than the unhealthy options.

Generally, I think most people would agree that "healthy food" is a diverse set of foods that do not contain empty calories.

Yeah, but define "empty calorie". Like, I eat pretty low-carb (mostly because I feel better, not out of any ideological thing). Heavy on lean meats and green vegetables, while I avoid pastas, root vegetables, breads, etc.--I think a potato is the closest thing to an empty calorie you'll find this side of a sugar cube, but reasonable people can and do disagree.

A potato is far better than white bread.

That's a fair cop. Potatoes are merely in the ballpark. (GI spikes for nutrients much more easily gotten from things that won't make me feel like crap? Either way, gimme.)

Exactly. Make sure your have a decent amount of fiber with your carbs so it digests slowly.

Potatoes on their own aren't empty calories. [1] One medium potato is ~150 calories but full of potassium, vit c, and other nutrients. It's when you fry them or drench them in cheese and bacon bits and sour cream or mash them with loads of butter that they become unhealthful.

An empty calorie is one that provides little to no nutritional value other than the calorie itself. In my mind the most common empty calories come from sugars, some flours, and some oils.

[1]http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=48

Completely disagree: I eat a high-fat (~70% of calories from fat) and lots of protein diet (I'm about 12% bodyfat).

Bacon* and cheese and sour cream are the healthy parts of that meal, the potato is the "empty" thing by far, and the thing that will provide the highest glycemic load of those ingredients, spiking insulin.

(note that I have no idea what bacon bits are, or if they're even pork meat)

That's a good point, it depends on your diet and goals and varies from individual to individual.

What's healthy for one person may not be healthy for another, based on body weight/lifestyle/activity level/etc.

Avoiding processed foods, limiting carb intake, and eating plenty of fruits and vegetables is a good rule of thumb. Also, make sure to stay hydrated to reduce false feelings of hunger.

When I was in college and couldnt afford steaks or other expensive forms of protein, I got them from eggs, one of the most well rounded sources of protein for the pricr

It's most likely a confluence of those, and other factors. My default inclination is to look to systemic effects first, though. So, in this case, whatever the specific balance between the confounding factors may be, my bet is that it's weighted towards "food deserts" creating the unhealthy habits, rather than being their consequence. People don't generally have a lot of choice but to eat what's available to them, and the overwhelming majority of what's available in these places is packaged and processed beyond recognition.

I grew up on the Great Plains, in the largest conurbation for hundreds of miles in any direction. I was literally surrounded by farm and ranchland. That area is classified as a food desert — a phenomenon I'm shockingly confronted with every time I fly home to visit the folks. Based on the conversations I've had with folks living there about this stuff, they (broadly) aren't even aware there are alternatives, or those alternatives are outright mocked. (Imagine growing up as a vegetarian when you have multiple relatives who ranch...)

I spend half of my time in a food desert and half my time in a hippie foodie mecca.

I think the answer is both. Rural areas lack the population to keep fresh food entrepreneurs from locating their businesses there.

At the same time, rural food culture tends to be shit outside of garden season - people think that potato chips and brownie mix are somehow valid ingredients in a recipe. They swap these "recipes" with their friends and look at you funny if you skip the bun and double up the veggies on your burger.

Well, based on his other activities helping lead an organization called Food Link (http://foodlinkny.org/), there is very high demand for healthful food in those areas. So while I would agree with you when taken without that context, he's been working hard for years towards proving the causation using multiple avenues.

And its not just causation. There are often unaccounted variables that are driving both the cause and effect and observing that decorrelates the cause and effect completely. There is some fascinating research going on on this in the field of economics. Matt Taddy, University of Chicago, Microsoft Research is doing some interesting research on this very kind of problem.

I also wonder about this. Most places restrict the number of liquor licenses, but I would imagine don't restrict the number of grocery stores. Large and small Asian markets seem to exist in a wide spectrum of neighborhoods.

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