English 101 - Food Accessibility and Health

Yan Zhou

Prof. Jirsaraie

English 101

26 Nov. 2014

Food Accessibility and Health

Subway, Burger King, McDonald’s, Cheesecake Factory and Domino’s Pizza. These are indeed popular and delicious fast food restaurants; but to many people, these are merely names that symbolize convenience. In the urban 21st century, people do not need to spare effort to find food that satisfies their appetites. Food is everywhere! As the economy booms and demand for higher living standards increases, cities are constructed in certain ways to maximize efficiency and convenience. The built environment, which refers to “the human-made space in which people live, work and recreate on a day-to-day basis” (Collins English Dictionary), greatly affects the way people lead their lifestyles. Apart from structures such as public transportation, skyscrapers and malls, another important contextual factor of built environment is accessibility to food, which directly relates to people’s everyday health. While consumers commend easy accessibility to tasty food as a result of urban design, some may face many destructive threats, especially bad nutrition, obesity and diabetes. As waistlines continue to grow, the obesity rate in the United States has more than doubled since the 1970s (National center for Health Statistics, 2009). Extensive research and statistical analysis show that availability of fast food restaurants, convenience stores and supermarkets greatly affects people’s health conditions due to the quality of food.

Easier access to fast food restaurants and convenience stores make people more vulnerable to obesity. According to Simone A. French et al. who worked for International Association for the Study of Obesity, as living conditions and demand for better-quality food has been increasing, people prefer to go to restaurants more often than in the past. According to statistics provided by National Restaurant Industry Pocket Facebook, eating out has become a popular trend in the U.S, which makes up 53% of total food spending in 2010. Over time, Americans have endorsed the fast food culture of pizzas, burgers, soft drinks and cookies to the extent that it has almost become an emblematic symbol of the American culture. Frequent intake of these food makes up the Standard American Diet, which is associated with high quantity of saturated fat and sugar and poor quality. This typical dietary pattern increases the risk of obesity and Type II Diabetes. The representative of Public Health Advocacy from California substantiated this notion in the McClatchy Newspaper; "We are living in a junk- food jungle, and not surprisingly, we are seeing rising rates of obesity and diabetes" (Griffith 3).

Many studies support the notion that proximity to retail food influences physical well-being. Dr. J. Nicholas Bodor and other two experts from Department of Community Health Science conducted studies on random sample of 3925 adults in New Orleans to find association between access to fast food and body weight. The study used data on “locations of food stores and fast food restaurants open during the years 2004 to 2005 provided by the Louisiana Office of Public Health (OPH)” and surveyed individuals in the city. The mathematical models Dr. Border et al. yielded statistically significant conclusions about access to food and risk of being overweight. They were 95% confident (which indicates a very high possibility that the claim is correct) that convenience store and fast food restaurant significantly increases the risk of being overweight, with obesity odd ratio^[1] of 1.01. An odd ratio greater than one is associated with a high odds outcome, and a larger than one obesity odd ratio suggests a significantly great chance of being obese (Bodor et al. 6). Similarly, in 2007, Dr. Griffith from Department of Health System in the University of California in Davis came up with the “retail food environment index” (RFEI) , which works by “adding the number of convenience stores and fast food restaurants and dividing that sum by the number of supermarkets and produce vendors, including farmers markets. By combining “the RFEI with heath data from a representative sample of 40,000 California residents,” Dr. Griffith found that average California adults have more access to fast-food restaurants and convenience stores than those from other states, and that adults living near retail food area have a 20% higher prevalence of obesity and 23% higher prevalence of diabetes.