Food Desert

Living in a small town is lovely.  As I mentioned previously, there is a certain quaintness to living in a small town one can not find in a big city.  But there are some negatives to small town living, and they are biggies.  For one, we live in a food desert.  According to the USDA, "food deserts are defined as parts of the country vapid of fresh fruit, vegetables, and other healthful whole foods, usually found in impoverished areas.  This is largely due to a lack of grocery stores, farmers' markets, and healthy food providers."  The lack of fresh, local, and healthful foods in a food desert means that when people need to eat something, it generally comes in the form of processed foods, laden with sugar, fat, and who knows what else.  

To start, the Town of Wise and the City of Norton contain a total of 4 grocery stores, which include Pay-Less IGA, Sav-A-Lot, Food City, and Walmart (Edit:  The Sav-A-Lot closed since this was originally posted, and a store called United Grocery Outlet moved in, which provides a discounted array of very random foods-- including a number of organics and gluten-free foods).  None of the remaining grocery stores have a selection of produce that I'm happy with, and only one has a real beer and wine aisle where you can find drinks to drown your sorrows about the lack of amazing items.  Food. Desert.  

It's really hard to explain what it's like to live in a food desert to people who don't.  I never heard the term before we moved here, and then after 2013, it became a buzz word because of Michelle Obama's initiative to create healthy school lunches for kids.  We learned early on in our new place that going to the grocery store on the first or fifteenth of the month was like entering a level of Dante's Inferno.  Food stamps are distributed electronically twice a month, on the first and fifteenth, and in an impoverished area like ours, that means the grocery stores are bustling.  On the first and fifteenth, every grocery cart (buggy) in the store is stocked to the brim with hundreds of dollars worth of food, but too often, those carts lack fresh fruit, vegetables, and other healthy whole foods.  In their absence, cases of soda, processed foods, and packaged junk take up all of the available real estate.

Sure, everyone has a choice of what they put in their cart, and then in their mouths.  I get that and fully support it.  But when you have to search through a pile of onions at your local Walmart for one that isn't moldy, diseased, or otherwise unappetizing, you might decide to stop searching.  When you buy heads of fresh garlic at the grocery store and they are almost always already sprouted, you might be less inclined to cook with fresh garlic.  This is life in a food desert.

We have one market that is family-owned and operated, and we think most of the fresh produce in there comes locally, or at least as locally as it can (obviously the peaches weren't grown here).  The selection in the winter is bleak, and that has more to do with the climate in this region than anything else.

I have never lived in a place that is devoid of fresh options.  I grew up in Florida, which meant fresh tomatoes, citrus fruit plucked right off a neighborhood tree, fruit stands on the side of the road, and my favorite- local mangoes- every summer.  Charlotte has a regional farmer's market that is actually bigger than our local Walmart, with an amazing selection of fresh cut flowers and an array of colorful fruits and veggies year round, in addition to crafts and a coffee stand.  When we decided to move to rural Wise County, VA, I assumed that meant we would have access to tons of fresh foods... I did not take altitude, terrain, or climate into consideration.  As such, when we want truly fresh and healthy food items we drive to Tennessee so we can buy groceries at The Fresh Market.  And that means a two-plus hour time commitment just in the commute, and 10% sales tax in Tennessee.

We are so fortunate because we have the means to get us to those places so we can buy better quality foods-- but the majority of the people living in this region don't have those options, so their only options are the aisles at the local Walmart.  It's sad to live in a food desert, and lonely.  Once I was sitting at my desk eating lunch, which included half of an avocado sprinkled with lemon juice, salt, and pepper.  A colleague came into my office to ask what I was eating.  When I said, "Oh... this?  Just an avocado..." she was perplexed-- she told me she'd never seen an avocado, much less seen anyone consume one.  After I shared this incident with Meg, she called me a food snob.  Maybe I am.  But that doesn't make me wrong.