AN EXPLORATION OF ALTERNATIVE FOOD DESERT DEFINITIONS IN SOUTH DALLAS

More than one-third of adults and approximately 17 percent of children and adolescents in the United States are obese. Heart disease, diabetes, and cancer are amongst the leading causes of death for Americans today—all of which are linked to obesity (Ogden et al., 2012). In the United States, high Body Mass Indices (BMIs) are associated with socioeconomically distressed populations (regardless of race), suggesting that environmental influences outside of a person’s biological makeup affect their health (Ford and Dzewaltowski, 2009). One prominent area of research into these influences has focused on the built environment, specifically the retail food environment (Smoyer et al. 2006; Larsen and Gilliland 2008). This literature refers to low income areas where there is little or no access to healthful foods as ‘food deserts’. One crucial area of concern in the food desert literature is the definition of a food desert. Past studies have typically focused their food desert definitions on some combination of access, affordability, and store type considerations. In particular, these definitions frequently focus on access to large national grocery retail chains, and usually exclude smaller grocery retailers (i.e., dollar stores, drug stores, and convenience stores). It is easy to assume that large chain stores provide the best variety and most competitive pricing of food items, but ignoring smaller food retailers omits an important source of food for consumers in communities with income and mobility issues. This study examines how food desert geographies are impacted by varying food desert definitions, including the incorporation of various kinds of small-format food retailers.