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Hungry for Health: A Journey Through Cleveland's Food Desert

4/15/2014

3 Comments

 
PictureWilla Sparks rides the bus home from a grocery store across town.
Tags: class, food/agriculture, health/medicine, inequality, race/ethnicity, rural/urban, food desert, food justice, poverty, racism, 11 to 20 mins
Year: 2010
Length: 13:58
Access: Vimeo

Summary:
Poor diets are a result of the structural inequalities that limit access to healthy food, not individual behaviors. Hungry for Health: A Journey through Cleveland’s Food Desert documents a day in the life of Willa Sparks, a woman living without ready access to fresh and affordable food. Instead, she must rely on corner stores, fast food restaurants, and gas stations selling processed and frozen foods. By most accounts, Sparks is a statistic. She lives in an economically deprived and segregated urban area. She is also single and raising a child. However, Sparks is not portrayed as a victim in Hungry For Health. Members of minority groups, including women, are more likely to be in poverty and living in food deserts; thus, they are more likely to suffer from poor health. While residential environments do shape racial health disparities, the film focuses on Sparks’ efforts to combat social inequalities. Denied the fresh vegetables and fruits needed to maintain a healthy diet, Sparks suffers a heart attack and is diagnosed with diabetes. The doctor warns her to change her eating habits or die young. Sparks rises to the challenge learning the nutritional knowledge she lacked and overcoming the first hurdle to accessing fresh foods for her family. Proximity, income, and mobility also influence her accessibility to a healthy diet. Sparks doesn’t own a car and can’t afford a taxi, so she must rely on public transportation to go to the market. At the store, she carefully selects her groceries, spending wisely and shying away from cheaper junk food. Her tight budget forces her to consider her bus pass as part of her daily expenditures. Because she’ll spend time outside waiting for buses and walking to destinations, she must always be prepared for inclement weather. There’s no direct route to the store, so Sparks spends the good part of the day traveling to purchase food before returning home to start preparing it. The process is slowed by her health and poor mobility. She walks with a cane and carries home as many grocery bags as she can lift. Viewers gain both a deeper understanding of food deserts and a new reverence for the people living in them. For more information about the film, please contact the filmmaker at theresa.desautels@gmail.com.

Submitted By: Mary Barr, PhD

3 Comments
Dan
4/16/2014 02:58:57 am

Having grown up in the City of Cleveland, the son of a single mother, I was particulary interested in this story when a friend shared the post. However, knowing the area lead me to check the facts.

If the goal of the filmmaker was to highlight the urban problem of food deserts, she should have choosen a subject that actually lived in a food desert. Willa Sparks, the subject of this video, lived 4 blocks from a Dave's Supermarket in 2010 when this video was produced. Her choice to take two buses and spend precious money and time to shop at a market outside her neighborhood, is precisely that, her choice.

If you don't believe me, google the address, and then search for grocery stores. Dave's Supermarket at 7422 Harvard has been there at least 10 years or so. There is also a Save-A-Lot not far west of there, which is a lower cost alternative to Dave's, but still has fresh (not just frozen) meat and vegetables.

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Emmanuel Oblikewu link
3/29/2017 10:19:46 am

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Wilson Fox
6/9/2022 04:16:35 pm

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