A food desert is a community or neighborhood that lacks fruits and vegetables in its community. Food deserts are commonly found in low income areas where the residents’ salaries are remarkably low. There is an abundance in processed and junk food polluting the area. Think about it, how often do you see a McDonalds or a Burger King when you are driving. In food deserts, there is a considerable shortage in healthy options. For many individuals, I am positive that they would agree that fast food is a lot more convenient when looking for a quick meal.
In general, there aren’t many options to choose from when deciding to eat something healthy. Food deserts are present in New Orleans, and they can be avoided with multiple solutions. New Orleans is a considerably small city, and overall has one of the lowest income states at about $37,000. When you think of healthy eating, then think of New Orleans, not much comes to mind when talking about food. In our city, we are known for foods such as Po-Boys, Gumbo and King Cake.
Majority of the city’s neighborhoods are food deserts; these neighborhoods contain a certain variety of cuisines; in New Orleans’ geography there are plentiful food deserts all over. Seafood is very popular in New Orleans; in all corners of the city, you can find a restaurant that serves seafood Food is defined as a substance with nutritional value that helps the body maintain life and growth. But have you ever considered that the food we eat does not help the body sustain viability.
Would if I tell you that the food that we eat is doing the exact opposite, it is killing us. More than 90% of our produce is considered processed. Processing is the enhancement of organic matter through the means of physical or chemical means. For example bacon is a common food found in majority of homes. Bacon is known for causing numerous health problems, more frequently cancer.
In bacon, there are extreme concentrations of sodium and sodium is filled with fatty acids that causes fat growth. Excessive consumption of sodium will lead to heart diseases and colorectal cancer. Carcinogens is the most common way that a person has acquired cancer. Carcinogens do not directly cause cancer but it can assist in the process of getting cancer; carcinogens can increase the speed of a cell dividing which boosts its chance of mutating. Common places where carcinogens are found are cigarettes, environmental problems like pollution, and mainly our nutrition intake. Processed meat like sausage, bacon, ham, beef, turkey, fish and all types of red meat all contain high traces of carcinogen in them. Cancer is a collection of many diseases that are able to change the structure of a cell’s DNA; like normal human cells, cancer cells split and divide creating copies of itself.
Cancer causes millions of death per year and is steadily growing. So what actually causes cancer, how does a human develop a bacteria whose cells can constantly multiply itself. Many people inherit the cells from their parents when they are born, yet how did the parents get the actual cancer. Cancer can be obtained from smoking cigarettes, obesity/lack of exercise, poor diet, chronic inflammation and more. Naturally humans are frugivores, a mammal who strictly developed to eat fruits and vegetables. Unlike animals such as wolves, lions and tigers, humans have small intestines that aren’t able to properly digest meat in the first place.
Carnivores eat solely meat because their bodies allow them to do so. As stated in above, meat contains many harmful products in them that our bodies aren’t quite capable of handling just yet. Carnivores have extremely strong stomach acids in their bodies that allow them to counter the toxins found in meat especially raw meat. Because we cook our meat the heat kills a fraction of the bacteria contained on raw meat, however the meat can not be broken down anymore past us chewing it.
In comparison to carnivores, humans have short rounded fingernails, and small relatively useless canines which can hardly tear flesh, our best feat in human mouths are for breaking hard nut. Yet carnivores have sharp claws and notably sharp canines that are evolved to cut. Carnivores do not chew their food because of their high stomach acids, even if they wanted to their teeth isn’t developed for it.
Not many people that live in a food desert realizes the effects of the foods they decide to eat. There are many people who do not know that we aren’t supposed to eat meat. Plant based diets are what we are capable of handling not that that’s a bad thing. A plant based diet does a lot more benefits than eating meat. For example decreasing and even curing major health problems. Foods like beans, vegetables, legumes are all high in fiber. Fiber helps your digestive system past wastes and other toxins through your body easily.
Eating a plant based diet can allow you to maintain a balanced weight; most fruits and vegetables contain a lot less protein than meat which is beneficial for those wanting to lose weight. There are literally countless advantages that these diets have to offer you, sadly not everyone has access to them. Many individuals who inhabit a food desert sees healthy eating as expensive. So instead the when the are hunger and want something quick and fulfilling to eat, they see fast food as the only alternative and in this case, it it. Looking in our local area, the chances of finding a healthy- convenient restaurant was very rare. However we did find some such as, Green to Go, Seed, Superfood bar and more. In general, there are some healthy options in New Orleans, but the neighborhoods surrounding the restaurants are mainly middle class residents.
I’ve decided to search around common areas with known low incomes, places such as the lower 9th ward, the east, and others and not one of part contained a genuine healthy restaurant. What I did find though in every one of these neighborhoods, were a McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Burger King. On occasions I would see a Smoothie King here and there, but Smoothie king isn’t considered alternative meal. So why do so many of the people of New Orleans have no access to certain food. Is it their fault that they have no healthier options in the local area that they can shop from? Based on studies, common fast food chains like McDonald’s place their restaurants where they think will attract the most consumers. Coincidently, majority of Mcdonald’s location lay in lower class neighborhoods.
The CEO’s of these establishments know exactly what they are doing, which leads me to conclude that they know what their food are doing to our bodies and environment. The fact that the popular cuisines in our community are of low quality pushes the belief that healthy eating is expensive; which in my opinion convinces the people to continuously eat from these companies. Majority of the people living in food deserts in New Orleans in the United States in general, are Blacks and Hispanics.
In these food deserts, most of the shopping locations are very close together, in fact most of them are all walking distance from each other. Every 1 of 3 neighborhoods in the United States is said to have a corner or liquor store within reasonable of their homes. These seems that owners of these supermarkets are purposely avoiding to put there places of business anywhere near low income neighborhoods. Whites already have a predominance in government and in the market.
Furthermore these major corporations not deciding to advertise their business in lowly districts adds increased suspicion of their racial standings. And approximately 45% of Blacks and Hispanics suffer from obesity due to poor diet.National examinations taking a gander at the relationship amongst heftiness and nourishment condition are uncommon. An as of late distributed examination following a group of kindergarten students in the Assembled States for five years and watching the relationships between their diet and weight pick up discovered that their sustenance condition was most certainly not associated with weight gain.
The study likewise found that grocery stores and littler sustenance merchants are more open in low-pay minority neighborhoods than non-minority groups. The examination was constrained by various reasons. Through the span, kids were required to take an interest in the investigation, various kids dropped out. Attributes of the individuals who dropped out were connected with minority low-wage groups. Furthermore, as bigger investigations for the most part do, the examination used a database of eateries and markets to characterize “nature” that the kids lived in as opposed to soliciting neighborhoods to explicitly distinguish eateries and basic supply stores.
The database might not have precisely followed store closings and openings over the course of five years and the subsequent changes in the nourishment environment. At long last, the investigation did not separate out kids who lived in the focal city, rural areas and provincial environments. The ponder found that densities of fast food eateries, markets, and general stores were more prominent for the areas of poor and minority youngsters than for non-minority children. Since minorities will probably live in urban communities than suburbs, the investigation may have been contrasting low-salary minority youngsters living in urban communities to center salary white youngsters living in rural areas. Grocery stores inside one mile are not effortlessly open for an individual living in the city without a vehicle contrasted with an individual living in the suburb with a vehicle. The discoveries in this think about are likely better comprehended inside the setting of littler investigations that don’t confront comparable requirements.
The trouble in tending to food deserts lies in the surrounding of the issue. There are a few imaginative ways to deal with expanding the capacity of minority groups to get to crisp, moderate and fulfilling sustenance. In any case, restricted plan of the issue offers just a brief and shallow fix to the basic issues of basic bigotry that demoralize interest in and administration of minority groups. To really take care of the issue of food deserts we should challenge the private isolation, business redlining, and other government strategies what’s more, private practices that sustain inconsistencies in sustenance access in low-pay minority neighborhoods. A case of the advantages of interest in minority groups is Bedford-Stuyvesant Reclamation, a 44-year old group improvement enterprise that works with occupants and business to enhance the personal satisfaction in Focal Brooklyn, New York. Looked with the total nonattendance of a noteworthy store retailer in the heart of the generally African-American neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Bedford-Stuyvesant Reclamation helped to establish, with national retailer PathMark, the Reclamation General store. Nearby endeavors to carry a national grocery store into the group had been foiled for a considerable length of time by the unwillingness of business loan specialists to give advances and the hazard avoidance of the popular stores, who were unaccustomed to working together in a low-wage minority group.
Acknowledging they expected to diminish this apparent hazard for a national grocery store, Bedford-Stuyvesant Reclamation built up a co-possession display in which they contributed 2/third of the in advance financing, acquired from a large group of littler banks including credit unions and dark claimed banks. This co-possession show had the upside of guaranteeing a few group possession and control over the grocery store, while as yet giving the entrance to providers and administration aptitude of a national grocery store chain. At the point when this 25-year co-proprietorship assention lapsed, Reclamation had close to nothing inconvenience finding an intrigued retailer to contribute totally in another store, and rented the retail space to Foodtown, a provincial market that works utilizing an establishment show. Today, the Super Foodtown situated in Rebuilding Square utilizes a critical individuals and gloats an amazing determination of crisp, arranged, and bundled nourishments.
