Abstract
Detroit is regularly assumed to be a “food desert” despite contradicting evidence. With fruits and vegetables available at each of Detroit’s 70 independent, full-line grocery stores, there remains a lack of understanding among media and academics of residents’ perception and preferences for food access. A baseline study was initiated during the summer of 2014 to understand residents’ own perceptions of food access and to assess the socio-cultural foodways utilized by residents. A total of 207 Detroit residents participated in focus groups and interviews to discuss food provisioning. Residents identified a wide range of food access points, from home gardens and fishing to specialty meat markets and big-box stores. However, 60% of residents reported that their primary grocery store was a chain supermarket outside the city limits. Residents highlighted “customer service” and in-store treatment as key factors in choosing where to shop for food. These new findings present contradictions to assumptions about food access in Detroit and similar cities. The findings point to a significant opportunity to leverage geo-ethnographic methods in order to focus on resident perceptions and preferences to improve food access.
Highlights
In the seminal 2009 U.S Department of Agriculture (USDA) report on “food deserts,” a key recommendation was to explore “how people fit grocery and food shopping into their daily activities and travel patterns, how these activities and patterns expose people to food environments outside of their neighborhoods, and how this may affect their shopping and diet” (Ver Ploeg et al, 2009, p. 48)
This study examined the role of foodways in Detroit residents’ perceptions of food access and food provisioning choices
The findings highlight the importance of understanding foodways and individual choice among populations living in an assumed “food desert.”
Summary
“If we get bad service, we just get mad and don’t complain. We must challenge the establishments in our community to step up they game. Among the food access misconceptions in Detroit are that food is purchased primarily at liquor stores (Hansen, 2008) and corner stores or “fringe” food outlets that are found more frequently in neighborhoods and are geographically closer to residential homes than other types of food outlets (Gallagher, 2007) Both the mass media and academia have engaged in piecemeal discussions around food access in Detroit, which has perpetuated myths and likely slowed improvements to food access in the city (Hill, 2017). Most researchers rely on quantitative (price, distance, density) and supply-side valuation metrics This approach often leads to overly prescriptive understandings of access in food environments and has allowed the “food desert” term to be wantonly applied (Hill, 2017). There is more to food access than delineated “food desert” zones, the number of grocery stores in a city, or how far away they might be from groups of residents
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