Food Deserts – Impact Lab

A burned Walgreens in Minneapolis on May 30

In many neighborhoods that have seen looting and vandalism over the past week, residents are now left with few — if any — grocery stores, pharmacies and other essential businesses. Which is made even harder by the fact that lots of stores are also closed because of the pandemic.

There’s a 6-mile long commercial corridor in South Minneapolis called Lake Street, and it has been destroyed.

“We no longer have pharmacies in our community,” said ZoeAna Martinez, who works for the Lake Street Council, a business association. “We no longer have gas stations as well. Our largest grocery stores are also gone,” Martinez said. “Right now, our community, we live in a food desert, which happened overnight.”

Continue reading… “Neighborhoods where stores were destroyed become food deserts overnight”

Chicagoans that vote for their favorite seeds, get free seeds to plant in their gardens.

It seems like an oxymoron that childhood obesity could occur in food deserts, but in much of the country that’s exactly what’s happened. Food deserts, often located in impoverished urban environments, are areas where residents have little access to fresh fruits and vegetables because there are no grocery stores or farmers’ markets nearby. Such areas are often plagued with quickie marts where families feed themselves the processed junk that’s available, fostering an obesity epidemic. Read on to see how one program is working to change Chicago’s landscapes and make these infamous food deserts a thing of the past…

Continue reading… “Chicago Combats Food Deserts and Childhood Obesity One Seed at a Time”