The fight over food deserts was never really about food.

Foodies wanted to help people in poor neighborhoods, but they couldn't see that the issue was bigger than fruits and vegetables, it was about racism and poverty.

Last month, the Washington Post published an editorial that repeated the same myths and misunderstandings that food access researchers have debunked for nearly a decade. I got mad and shot off a quick letter to the editor, but still felt I had a bit more to say.

This is an extended version of that letter (still short, promise) that lets me expand on what I wanted to talk about. I still have more thoughts on this. I mean, I wrote a book about this stuff. But writing this helped me blow off a little steam.

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Invest in people first and the grocery stores will come

It is time to reframe the entire debate around “food deserts.” Despite the wishful thinking food policy makers and advocates, the research has been clear that the current menu of solutions that we’ve been trying for the past two decades years do not noticeably change the way people eat.

We need to invest in people. We need to provide them with the resources they need to get good jobs (education and training). And we need to grow the infrastructure they need to accept and keep those jobs (transportation and childcare). Giving money to food businesses to move to poorer neighborhoods via tax breaks and giveaways is not a sustainable solution.

To shrink the grocery gap we need to increase the density of people in so-called food deserts as well as their incomes. After we do that, the stores will happily come to serve them. Invest in the customers and the businesses will follow.

For the past two decades policy makers and advocates have fundamentally misunderstand the root causes of the “food desert” problem. Federal initiatives and municipalities have tried every tool in the toolkit: subsidize grocery store grand-openings and corner store makeovers; support urban agriculture and create community gardens; organize farmers markets and promote local foods. You name it they’ve tried it.

On paper, these strategies seem like a perfect solution. But in practice, they fail to change the way people eat for one simple reason: making healthy food closer and cheaper is not enough to change diets. Price and proximity are not the only variables that shape eating habits, and in many instances, they aren’t even the most important ones.

We know that inserting a new grocery store doesn’t change what neighborhood residents purchase, only where they buy their preferred items. While it is true that a new grocery store will save food desert residents time and money, there is no evidence that those same people will reallocate those savings towards healthier foods that cost more per calorie and take longer to prepare at home.

The reason is simple: being poor in America is expensive and time consuming. People who live in food deserts constantly juggle competing economic and time pressures that immediately absorb any extra dollars and hours that shopping at a nearby grocery store can provide. If you want to know how and why people in “food deserts” eat the way they do, just talk to them.

I spent years interviewing people who struggled to get to the store. Over time, I came to see their dietary solutions as incredibly logical, resilient and innovative. Their meal making was built around the complex everyday realities of their lives. A new store a few miles closer barely made a dent in their eating practices compared to the weight of their work schedules, their kid’s school calendar, and the preferences of the others in their household.

We need to reframe the entire debate around food deserts. It's not about distance to stores. It’s about poverty. That is driving the poor health outcomes of those in food deserts.

Remember, fast food consumption in this country increases as income increases. And while wealthier people eat healthier on average, their diets aren’t perfect, either. So why aren’t we developing federal campaigns to dictate the dietary choices of those who earn more?  Because their access to adequate housing, health, education, and recreation helps them offset the negative effects of their less than stellar nutritional strategies.

To solve the food desert problem, we need to shift away from supply side solutions and instead use those funds to improve the buying power of community residents. They did not ask for their side of town to be hollowed out by highway and housing policies of the post WWII period. 

The geographic distribution of high-quality retail in America is not random. In the 1960s and 70s, federally funded highways paved the way to the suburbs and facilitated an era of white flight away from city centers. This racialized movement of wealth and population from the urban core left segregated and concentrated poverty in its wake. Divested and depleted, these neighborhoods struggled to support the familiar corner stores that had catered to their needs for generations. The few mom-and-pop ventures that held on were eventually crushed by the emergence of big box stores that set up shop outside of town.

The lack of supermarkets are the headline of this battle today, but sustainable communities need better retail in general to rebuild their local economies. The neighborhoods we call “food deserts” today also need affordable hardware, merchandise, and banking, to name a few. The only way we can get these businesses come back and stay in business is to amplify the purchasing power of the customer base. Invest in the customers first and the stores will follow.