this article from USA TODAY sneaks in its inevitable pro-corporate angle in the last paragraph. it's still worth reading.
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Food fright: Black neighborhoods in L.A. have poor choice
By Nanci Hellmich, USA TODAY
A new study confirms what obesity researchers have said for years: Grocery stores in lower-income black neighborhoods offer fewer healthful foods than stores in more affluent, mostly white communities, making it more difficult for poorer people to maintain a normal weight and live a healthy lifestyle.
This may partly explain why some groups such as black women have higher rates of obesity.

For the latest study, trained community volunteers and academic researchers in the Los Angeles area studied 261 stores in specific areas of South Los Angeles, Inglewood and North Long Beach, whose populations are 47% black, with a median household income of $29,237.

They compared foods found in those stores with products in 69 stores in areas in West Los Angeles (between Santa Monica and Beverly Hills, but not including those communities) that are mostly white and have a median income of $45,917. They then looked more closely at 71 stores in the white and black communities to flesh out their study.

A statistical comparison was done by researchers with local health advocacy group Community Health Councils Inc., the University of Southern California and the University of California-Los Angeles. Among their findings, reported in the July issue of Journal of General Internal Medicine:

• 38% of the stores in the black communities carried skim milk, compared with 80% of white neighborhoods.

• 70% of the stores in the black neighborhoods had fresh fruits and vegetables, compared with 94% of the stores in the white communities.

• There was less variety of produce, and it was of a poorer quality, in the black neighborhoods: 13 fruits and 21 vegetables in a typical store in those areas, compared with 26 fruits and 38 vegetables in the stores in the mostly white communities.

Community members reported "finding unappealing vegetables and fruits such as brown bananas" in the lower-income neighborhoods, says lead author David Sloane, an associate professor of policy, planning and development at USC.

There were marked differences in the types of stores in the communities.

"In West Los Angeles, they tend to be larger chain stores," Sloane says. "In South Los Angeles, they tend to be more mom-and-pop stores. ... They don't have a strong a relationship with distributors to get as great a variety of goods, and so the result is people have a fewer choices of healthy items."
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anticrisis

lynx

latest comments

Even "Mom and Pop" stores only stock what they can sell. Now, was a survey done to find out what these customers would buy if it was stocked?

The comment ""Community members reported "finding unappealing vegetables and fruits such as brown bananas" "" indicates to me that bananas were not selling very well. I must ask how long the bananas in question had been on the shelf, were they green to start with but turned brown because nobody buys them?

Now we come to the summary of the article....

quote:- There were marked differences in the types of stores in the communities.

"In West Los Angeles, they tend to be larger chain stores," Sloane says. "In South Los Angeles, they tend to be more mom-and-pop stores. ... They don't have a strong a relationship with distributors to get as great a variety of goods, and so the result is people have a fewer choices of healthy items." -:end quote

So that is the reason!!!!! lack of big mega corporation chain stores in Black areas!!! Mom and pop stores cannot offer the quality, variety and low price that the large chain store can!

Big Chain = More Choice, Better Quality????

Mom and Pop = Low Quality, Little Choice????

seems this article is advocating more chain stores in South L.A.


Very interesting.....................

Now go read any anti-Starbucks thread!

I would have to agree, many people that post at the site are strongly opposed to big corporations because they are only concerned about making money. But now you are saying the mom and pop stores are bad because they have brown bananas. So who is going to tell mom and pop they have to sell their store and sell it to Vons or Albertsons because there are fat people in South LA.

Many times people are obese because of eating habits and the amount people eat. I do not speak from a vacuum. Many of my relatives are quite large and most is because of eating habits and not being able to push away from the table.

The best way is through education on what to eat and more importantly what not to eat. Too many times children walk around with bags of chips. Teach them to walk around with an apple or a peach and keep them busy and not sitting behind a computer game.

supply and demand. the stores sell what people buy or else they go out of business. feel free to open up your own health food store in an african american community.

so, is education not the answer???

...well, it doesn't seem to have done you any good...

OUCH, stop it......did you stay up late thinking of that?

"did you stay up late thinking of that?"

No. "Thinking" is not something of which I have ever experienced. I'm a dumbfuck liberal (pardon the redundancy).