Research Paper Food Desert

Words: 542
Pages: 3

The idea of a food desert is exactly what it sounds like. A food desert, defined by the United States Department of Agriculture, is an area in which there is a deficiency of fresh fruit, vegetables, and other healthful whole foods, in one particular, usually impoverished, area. I chose to use the city of Las Vegas, Nevada to focus on for this project. I wanted to see if the ‘high-roller’ life style that everyone envisions when going to Vegas is so skewed that it leaves at least an area of the surrounding people in poverty. I have never been to Las Vegas myself, so all that I am going off it movies (the Hangover) to judge how the dynamic of the city works. When I first began to plot each of the grocery stores in Las Vegas, I noticed that many …show more content…
However, many of the grocery stores are found in the southern side of the city while only a few in northern areas. Looking at the map having to do with income, I was surprised to see the income of where the majority of the grocery stores are. This idea of food deserts is that lower income areas will have less accessibility to fresh products and specifically grocery stores. This is simply not the case with respect to Las Vegas. In fact, many of the grocery stores are found within a neighborhood that has either below average or average income compared with the rest of the United States and especially in the city of Las Vegas. This really surprises me. I suspect that the reason of that there is a low-income average in the areas of grocery stores is because many are located in business rather than residential areas. As you would expect, the areas closer to the main freeways and highways would cost less to own and therefor, house people with a lower comparative income. When we look at the income map compared to the food desert map, we also see similar to what we saw with the average