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The Urban Crisis in Detroit
The Urban Crisis in Detroit
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“The food you eat can either be the safest and most powerful form of medicine or the slowest form of poison”, Ann Wigmore. Food is a fundamental necessity in life, a critical aspect to the physical and mental development of an individual, and a basic right to which some people find themselves lacking. For the scope of this paper, our group will be looking at the core issues of food sovereignty, the overall challenges of creating a food sovereign city, the root causes of these problems, and some possible solutions within our city of Detroit. According to the U.S. Food Alliance, “food sovereignty can be defined as the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their …show more content…
Since we are focusing on the city of Detroit, the citizens of Detroit are the ones most affected, however we must take it a step further and look at what group or groups of Detroit citizens are affected. More specifically, the people who are having issues with access to healthier foods and lack a way of defining how they’re getting these foods are the people who fall in the poverty class of Detroit, which majority is made up of African Americans. This is generally the group who suffers the most in the majority of U.S cities. Some of the root causes specifically in Detroit are due to the deindustrialization and the movement to the suburbs, corruption in the Detroit government that led to bankruptcy and an overall negative view on the city. These are some of the key causes to the poverty of the city which is important to state, as poverty levels correlate with people who lack access to healthy …show more content…
In 2011, Data Driven Detroit debunked the common notion that Detroit, as a whole, is a “food desert”, defined as an area where residents do not have accessibility of nutritious food (Oosting). This is important as it shows that the city has made some progress and is no longer considered a food desert. The issue with this is that most residents turned to gas stations and fast food restaurants due to their convenience and cheap price. While the city may have 115 full-service grocery stores, access to these food providers is often a burden for residents. These burdens include lack of transportation to the grocery stores and affordability. These behaviors lead to poor choices in diet, which has been proven to be correlated with health
In “Called Home”, the first chapter of the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year in Food Life, Barbara Kingsolver presents her concerns about America's lack of food knowledge, sustainable practices, and food culture. Kingsolver introduces her argument for the benefits of adopting a local food culture by using statistics, witty anecdotal evidence, and logic to appeal to a wide casual reading audience. Her friendly tone and trenchant criticism of America's current food practices combine to deliver a convincing argument that a food culture would improve conditions concerning health and sustainability. I agree with Kingsolver that knowing the origin of food is an important and healthy benefit of developing a true food culture, but it is impractical to maintain that everyone is able to buy more expensive food. Kingsolver presents a compelling argument for developing a food culture, however this lifestyle change may not be practical or even possible for a poverty-level citizen. The following essay will summarize and respond to Kingsolver’s argument to demonstrate how “Called Home” is a model for novice social scientists.
In her essay, “Food’s Class Warfare,” author Tracie McMillan promotes the inclusion of both “individual changes and structural ones” (217), particularly “class consciousness” (217), in the fight for quality diets in America. She reveals the most common sides of the healthy food debate as the inherent “just-buy-better stuff logic” (215) and the opposing “structural challenges of eating well” (215). The main strategies for defeating the American “obesity epidemic” (216) have been reaching out to the individual, as well as changing the structure of the American food system itself. The favorite concept for structuralists is “food deserts - neighborhoods with insufficient grocery stores and thus insufficient supplies of healthy food” (216). She deems the concept insufficient in practice, as it ignores smaller markets and equates large stores with a healthy food source. While the individual viewpoint and structuralists argue with each other, they share common ideals. According to
An important issue for Today is how can we make people pick the best nutritional option because giving the poor easy access to healthy food doesn’t mean they’ll buy It. For example, “In 2010, the Morrisania section of the Bronx
Because the people who live in food deserts do not get proper supplements of fruits and vegetable, much of their diets are consisted of mainly junk food, fast food, and meats. As a result of this, today, more than one third of adults in America are obese. In addition to obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease can also be results of a lack of healthy food choices, which result from people buying their food from convenience stores that only sell processed foods and from fast food restaurants. This paper attempts to provide readers with a better understanding of the fact that not only do food deserts exists, they are threatening the lives of Amer...
... reside in those neighborhoods do not get grocery stores such as Mariano’s. When one walks around a predominately black community and or lower income, it is not easy to spot an organic healthy store. But if one was to walk around a higher income community, he can find a store who produces and or sells healthy food items. Because of the stores that is parallel to the obesity people see in their own neighborhood. The obesity rates have been rising according to the Illinois Advisory Committee. According to the New York Times, there has been a rise in food deserts because of the closing of the Dominick’s grocery store. People are having to take two buses to get to the nearest store that sells quality food. That is an issue of its own. It is not fair that people who need these stores are getting it taken away from them with no replacement. There has to be another way.
Brook speaks about a woman named Kelly Bower and her suggestions for solving this problem in low-income neighborhoods. One of Bower’s suggestions is having local policymakers find ways to convince supermarkets and grocery stores to locate in “food desert” areas. According to Sanger-Katz’s article, policymakers have relocated the supermarkets to improve the health of poor neighborhoods but people are still choosing the same foods. People still choose the same unhealthy food because they prefer to eat that kind of food. Obesity is becoming a big problem in America and Finley says that “drive-thrus are killing more people than the drive-bys” because there are more fast food restaurants than there are grocery stores. In the article “Giving the Poor Easy Access,” Sanger-Katz talks about a man named Brian Elbel, who did a study with grocery stores, and he states “improving access, alone, will not solve the problem” of food
Almost everyone has eaten fast food at some point in their lives, but not everyone realizes the negative effects some fast food can have on our nutrition. My family especially is guilty of eating unhealthy fast food meals at least once a week because of our budget and very busy schedules. In Andrea Freeman’s article entitled, “Fast Food: Oppression through Poor Nutrition,” She argues that fast food has established itself as a main source of nutrition for families that live in average neighborhoods and have low-incomes. Freeman begins the article by explaining how the number of fast food outlets is beginning to grow in poor communities because of the cheap prices and quick service these restaurants are famous for. The overabundance of fast
Alviola IV, Rodolfo M. Nayga Jr., and Michael Thomsen to learn more about what food deserts and how they impact the society around them. I believed that this was a good source because it went into what food deserts are and how they might be connected to the increase of obesity. I learned that a food desert is an “area where access to healthy foods is limited or constrained” (Alviola 106). I also learned that studies have shown people who live in food deserts “are likely to pay higher prices for food and have limited options in terms of purchasing healthy foods” (Alviola 106). After reading this article I have realized that Xavier may also be in a food desert because the closest grocery store is Kroger whose produce is almost always non-fresh and does not look edible to eat which encourages people to leave and resort to eating fast food for every meal. Needing more information about the effects of Food Deserts I started to look at an article called, “The Effects of Food Deserts on the Weight Status of South Dakota Children”, written by Emily Niswanger, Elizabeth Droke, Suzanne Stluka, and Kuo-Liang Chang. I believed that this was a great next source to look into because the name of the article was exactly what I wanted to get more information about. The source was about one study that was made in the state of South Dakota to discover if food deserts do have an effect on
Michael Pollan makes arguments concerning the eating habits of the average American. Pollan suggests, in spite of our cultural norms, we should simply “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants.”
Walsh, Bryan. “America’s Food Crisis.” NEXUS. Eds. Kim and Michael Flachmann. Boston: Pearson, 2012. 166 – 173. Print.
American citizens economic standing plays a role in the what foods they buy, where they buy, and their accessibility to buy. According to the United States Department of Agriculture an estimated twenty-three and a half million people live in a “food desert”. which is an urban or rural community that has little to no access to fresh food distributors such as a supermarket or farmers market. A lot of times these communities only food options are convenience stores and fast food restaurants, such as McDonalds and 7-Eleven, that...
Nutritionism and Today’s Diet Nutritionism is the ideology that the nutritional value of a food is the sum of all its individual nutrients, vitamins, and other components. In the book, “In Defense of Food” by Michael Pollan, he critiques scientists and government recommendations about their nutritional advice. Pollan presents a strong case pointing out the many flaws and problems that have risen over the years of following scientific studies and government related warnings on the proper amount of nutrients needed for a healthy diet. Pollan’s main point is introducing science into our food system has had more of a negative impact than a positive one, we should go back to eating more of a traditional diet. I believe food science has given us
For economists and politicians, there are a few things that still are not considered, and the missing answers are only piling up; someone always has to win or lose out. Food policies are one of them. Bringing urban agriculture to cities is an incomparable move. When community food growing flourishes, the consumers seem to be healthier and smarter about what they eat, less p...
Picture a group of people restrained from specific type of food because of their skin color, or because they belong to a lower class status. Or imagine people are not being allowed to enjoy the freedom of growing what they love. That’s why food injustice can be seen as pervasive problem that affects different people. According to veteran organization Just Food (2010), food justice is “communities exercising their right to grow, sell, and eat [food that is] fresh, nutritious, affordable, culturally appropriate, and grown locally with care for the well-being of the land, workers, and animals.” Race and class are two of the factors that lead to food injustice because people’s access to food can be limited according to their skin color and class status.
When we use the term “Right to Food”, we imply three basic responsibilities of the state i.e, To respect, protect and to fulfill. To respect means that the state is bound not to take any measurements that can dispossess people by means of accessing food. To protect signifies the fact that the state should have laws and apposite actions that averts other individuals or corporations from infringing other people’s right to food and lastly to fulfill indicates that the state should dynamic...