Global ChangeIntersection of Nature and Culture

Are rural kids overweight because of a lack of access to healthy food?

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

Rural and urban areas have in common an increasing problem of grocery store consolidation and flight to suburbia, which has a more-profitable mix of cheap land for big box stores and greater densities of affluent consumers.

As the source of healthy foods goes away, the resulting communities are often described as “food deserts.”  When we think of food insecurity in the world, we often think of famines in developing countries.  Unfortunately, food insecurity is also an issue here at home for America’s poor.  When grocery stores are far away, people may rely more on smaller grocery and convenience stores, thereby consuming more high-calorie junk foods and other processed foods.

In a recent issue^1,2 of Rural Sociology (subscription required), Kai Schafft and colleagues examined populations across Pennsylvania where 50% of people lived farther than 10 miles from large grocery stores (8 miles is deemed an average trip to the store) and compared them to populations where people lived closer to big stores.

What did they find?

Rural areas had significantly fewer large grocery stores and significantly greater numbers of overweight or obese kids.  Even after correcting for underlying differences in income, education level, and housing quality (all of which were lower in rural areas), the distance to grocery stores was still significantly related to obesity.

The authors argue that a lack of public transportation and long school bus rides may also contribute to the higher rates of rural obesity (relative to urban food deserts).  However, by examining only aggregate data (i.e., not tracking individuals and their behavior), they overlooked the potentially important role of diet choice.  As someone who grew up in the rural South, where biscuits and gravy, chicken and dumplings, fried catfish and hushpuppies, bar-b-que, and burgers and fries always seemed to be within arm’s reach, I have a hunch that what people choose to eat might be as important as how far the nearest store is.  As the authors acknowledge, further study is needed.

Nevertheless, this study helps to highlight the perfect storm that is brewing over rural America:

• poor diet
• limited availability of healthy food
• lack of exercise
• longer transportation routes
• lack of economic resources to break away from poor school food programs

To a large extent, food and diet are a matter of personal choice and responsibility.  However, when obesity is facilitated by poverty (including economically disadvantaged school districts) and the lack of accessible, healthy food options, it also becomes an issue of environmental and social injustice to which we should be attuned.

Fortunately, there are ways to deal with this—most notably nutrition, food assistance, and wellness programs in K-12 education.  But these take money that rural school systems often don’t have.

¹Schafft, K. et al. (2009) Food deserts and overweight schoolchildren: Evidence from Pennsylvania. Rural Sociology 74(2): 153-177.

²Bowdoin people can access the article here.

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