Food-Desert Researcher Slams Times Article

CHICAGO — A  noted food-desert researcher here took issue with an article in The New York Times this week that quoted two new studies undercutting the connection between food deserts — neighborhoods lacking access to fresh foods — and obesity.

According to the Times article, the studies, from the RAND Corp. and the Public Policy Institute of California, found that poor urban neighborhoods have more, not fewer, grocery stores and supermarkets than affluent ones, and that there is no relationship between the type of food being sold in a neighborhood and obesity among its children and adolescents. The RAND study was published in the February issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, while the Public Policy Institute of California’s study appeared in the March issue of Social Science and Medicine.

However, in a detailed rebuttal released this week, Mari Gallagher, principal of Mari Gallagher Research & Consulting Group, attacked the article for creating "the inaccurate impression that food access and the concept of food deserts does not matter.” Gallagher is the author of several studies on food access, including a seminal 2006 report looking at the impact of food deserts on public health in Chicago.

“The existence of food deserts in many U.S. cities is not an idea, but an established fact,” she said. “My firm has found and reported statistically significant relationships in Chicago between a lack of access to nutritious food options and two crucial indicators of negative health impacts: higher body mass index, which is a proxy for obesity, and increased incidents of premature death by diabetes.”

The Times article, she added, failed to note “the large number of studies that have found a link between living in underserved areas and poor health outcomes.”

Gallagher also criticized the article for suggesting that policy makers want to combat obesity simply by improving access to fresh foods. “To my knowledge, no one of any credibility has ever suggested that access was the entire solution or that anything involving the complicated relationship between diet and health is simple,” she said.

“Healthy food access is a necessary and important foundation to build upon — we cannot choose healthy food unless we have access to it,” she added. “Once we do have access, other factors that drive individuals to make unhealthy food choices come into play. Behaviors do not change overnight. We all have a lot of work to do.” She pointed, for example, to the importance of nutrition education.

Gallagher also critiqued the sample sizes and data sources used in the two studies and noted that the Times article omitted mentioning the impact of automobile access in obtaining food.