Most likely, food deserts exist because we are transitioning away from an economy based on the idea of a nuclear family with a male breadwinner, female homemaker and 2.5 kids and all our benefits (medical, retirement), food culture etc. has all these baked in assumptions that mom is doing the grocery shopping and cooking for a family of four or more and that's no longer reality.
People don't have time to cook.
We haven't done enough to update our work arrangements to allow for someone to both work and eat well without mom having dinner waiting for dad when he gets home from work.
We haven't updated our food culture to allow for enough fresh, healthy options that don't take a lot of time.
I feel like advertising does so much to move the needle the wrong way, as well as services like Uber Eats. No one is out there advertising how great heads of broccoli are...its not a sexy product. But colorful Fruit Loops with 3000g of sugar per bowl that are addicting as anything I've ever come across...now there is a catch. I've also seen a shift of eating apart for families as well, I would be curious to know how many families actually sit down at a table for a nightly meal nowadays.
Most people don't actually understand the problem space. You don't even seem to understand the problem space, given your closing line:
I would be curious to know how many families actually sit down at a table for a nightly meal nowadays
The entire point I am making is that we are moving away from a life that revolves around the nuclear family. Many households in the US today have one to three members.
If you live alone or as part of a childless couple or are a single parent, etc. then this cooking from scratch "the way my mother did" just doesn't actually logistically work. And I see the evidence of this over and over and over in online forums, from comments to questions about how to cope with various aspects of the issue.
People are not happy with the way they eat and they don't know how to fix it. And the solutions we come up with are often not really very good solutions.
Multiple reasons. I forgot the exact definition, grocery store within two miles or something.
Some neighborhoods the big chains leave because they lose a lot of money from theft. A whole lot of money. I heard all kinds of schemes from talking to people when I drove a cab, people would walk out of stores with full grocery carts. So they just write off that part of town and the locals get Dollar General and gas station convenience stores to shop at.
Then, grocery chains don’t like competing one store against another and there’s only three (I believe) major chains these days so won’t build them too close together. Depending on how they’re spread out you might end up with no stores reasonably close. So back to Dollar General.
One thing I noticed about Phoenix is the poor and rich areas both didn’t have much shopping. Rich areas, didn’t matter, they just drove to the store and were happy about it, try to find a gas station in Paradise Valley or North Scottsdale. Poor areas, matters a lot because they have to pay a premium to shop local or pay for a ride to a proper grocery store. Even if it’s only $20 round trip that adds up when money is tight. I used to get these calls where the insurance company would pay for a cab ride to pickup prescriptions and there’d be four adults with three full shopping carts thinking they were getting a free shopping trip. If they had a reasonable amount of groceries (they were there anyway…) I’d take them with maybe a little whining but if it’s a couple families doing their monthly shopping thinking I’m going to waste close to an hour for $6 then, no, I’d just leave them. Eh, got kind of off track there.
They exist because of capitalism. You've talked a lot about how capitalism works but seem unfamiliar with the negative effects capitalism can have
Let me illustrate how this happens. Walmart enters into a small town. They bankrupt the local groceries by undercutting and using economy of scale. They become the sole grocer in town. Healthier alternatives cannot exist because Walmart quickly crushes them.
Next, Walmart leaves because they've squeezed as much value as possible out of the town and are no longer seeing growth. The jobs and grocery that the town relied on vanish, and no other grocers can enter into that space because of the bootstrap costs.
This location is now a food desert. Nearest grocery access is a few towns over, or you get lucky and one of the dollar store chains enters in to help.
This isn't just an illustrative example. This is something that happens [1]. Constantly. [2].
