journail 8/11/2010

Today we talked to Catherine Gillis, a PHD student from Loyola University.
Catherine conducted a study with Dr.Kelly Moore about what people in low income communities like to eat.
She introduced to us the idea of "food deserts" and "food swamps".
Food deserts is when here isn't grocery store while food swamps have a variety of fast food restaurants.
i was very interested in this topic because i think it's interesting knowing that in the low income areas of the city there are not even enough grocery stores provided so that people can go shop there. It made me realize how people that live in low income neighborhoods are always being put down and showed that they are not as important as others.
I believe this is true because when you look at statistics and maps, you will find that people from higher income neighborhoods have all of the things that they need. you will find that they have access to things that many low income people don't have access to.
I really think this is a problem that should be fixed, while some people is living fancy and they have access to everything, some people are only given the option to buy certain things and if they want to eat something different then they have to travel sometimes great distances to get what they need.
Basically what Catherine told us today is that people of low income are making choices about food because they don't have a lot of options.
27 individuals were interviewed. 24 of this individuals were African American and 3 were Hispanic. 4 of them were men and 23 of them were woman.
The results that were found from this study were:
-provisioning (elaborate food networks). basically, people have ways to obtain food from places out of their reach by car pooling or by going shopping with a member of the family that can take them to buy groceries.
I found this very interesting, i never thought that people would actually have to go through so much in order to get groceries for their families.
This is a huge problem that the city should address. Instead of spending millions of dollars building a hotel across Wrigley field, the city should spend tat money building more grocery stores on low income neighborhoods so that people can have access to a wide variety of things without having to travel miles just to get fresh produce.
I learned that people only went shopping once or twice a month and when they did go, they froze a lot of the things that they bought so that it could last them much longer.
The study that Catherine did also showed that a lot of people didn't eat out, even at fast food restaurants because it was too expensive. They would rather cook a meal at home.
I also learned that the majority of fast food eaters are male adolescents.
Something that i found shocking was that out of the 27 people that were interviewed, only one of them went shopping at the local jewel Osco.
Something that i got me very thoughtful was reading that people in this communities do not think food is a main health concern.
Another thing that the study showed is that people make decisions about food, based on what other members of their family like to eat.
In conclusions, Public health and urban planning interventions should be informed by residents provisioning practices and values.
Because there is a great variation in diet,additional health factors should be examined to explain disparate health outcomes.