{"id":2157,"date":"2010-05-26T12:10:06","date_gmt":"2010-05-26T16:10:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=2157"},"modified":"2010-05-26T12:10:06","modified_gmt":"2010-05-26T16:10:06","slug":"cantons-food-desert-gets-much-needed-rain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2010\/05\/26\/cantons-food-desert-gets-much-needed-rain\/","title":{"rendered":"Canton’s food desert gets much needed rain"},"content":{"rendered":"

This spring Canton became a sort of crucible testing the concept of “food deserts”. (That’s “desert” as in dry, not “dessert” as in delicious!)<\/p>\n

Food deserts<\/a> are a hot topic<\/a> in the worlds<\/a> of obesity\/nutrition<\/a> and the locavore movement. \u00a0 Basically, millions of Americans in low income urban or rural communities have to travel a long way to find healthy food, especially plentiful fruits and vegetables.\u00a0 More often than not, they don’t.\u00a0 Instead, they eat easier to find, less healthy processed foods.<\/p>\n

Canton’s supermarket was closed for two months, and the community became a food desert.\u00a0 (A quick shout-out here to Nature’s Storehouse<\/a>, a small grocery\/health food store that offers fresh produce and healthy food, that stood as the exception.\u00a0 (full disclosure – my wife works there.))<\/p>\n

Interviewing folks at the new Price Chopper, which opened Monday, everyone I talked to mentioned how hard it was to get the fresh fruits and vegetables they wanted.\u00a0 People like Bob and Candace Cowser<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

My experience was similar to the Cowsers.\u00a0 We ate out more.\u00a0 We dug deeper into the pantry’s canned foods and the freezer’s frozen foods.\u00a0 It was frustrating.\u00a0 But we know how to cook.\u00a0 And, as I say above, my wife works at a small grocery.<\/p>\n

The reality is it’s an effort for people in rural areas to get produce most of the year (summer’s the easiest, when the harvest provides a bounty).\u00a0 Supermarkets are a long drive away.\u00a0 Processed foods save trips and, as we’ve noted before, money.<\/p>\n

Maps drawn based on research done on food deserts<\/a> show much all of the North Country to be a rural food desert – even with all the supermarkets open.<\/p>\n

But the last two months brought that reality into sharp relief.<\/p>\n

Is there any fix to this?\u00a0 It’s not like you can build supermarkets every ten miles on county routes.\u00a0 Are rural areas destined to be food deserts except when the harvest comes in?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This spring Canton became a sort of crucible testing the concept of “food deserts”. (That’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2157"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2157"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2161,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2157\/revisions\/2161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}