On a stroll through Boston Common, one can revel in the rich history the city has to offer. Yet, not everything is positive: Redlining, a historical racist zoning practice, still affects residents’ access to food across Massachusetts today, creating debilitating food deserts often rooted in systemic racism. Take Lawrence, Mass.: Home to 76,000 residents with a large Black and Latine population, the city has only two supermarkets. Many persist off of mainly non-nutritious, pre-packaged food from some of the 86 bodegas in the city, the more practical and efficient option. With 80% of the population living in a CDC-qualified food desert, two-thirds of the Lawrence population are obese, one of the highest rates in the state.
Many food deserts like Lawrence are essentially examples of food apartheid, “a system of segregation that divides those with access to an abundance of nutritious food and those who have been denied that access due to systemic injustice,” a definition coined by food sovereignty leader Karen Washington. These areas are typically low-income, where residents often lack access to efficient transportation and proper grocery stores. Urban food deserts, the most common ones locally, are characterized by large populations of residents who live a mile or more from a grocery store. It is no coincidence that many urban food deserts are inhabited disproportionately by Black and Latine communities. If comprehensive policy steps are not taken to increase accessibility to healthy food, the effects of redlining will continue to nutritionally harm communities of color in the Greater Boston area.
A History of Racism and Redlining Impacts Food Access Today
Racial residential segregation in Boston can be traced back as early as 1843, but what is traditionally called redlining started in the 1930s. During the Great Depression, certain geographic tracts were labeled “red” and denied capital investment and lending institutions on account of being supposedly high risk. These areas, predominantly populated by people of color, saw their economic opportunities severely handicapped and their access to resources hindered. In an interview with the HPR, Aja Lans, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard, also cites the urban renewal of the ’50s and ’60s as a catalyst of further residential segregation: “The highways intentionally wouldn’t have exits that were convenient to places Black folks live,” thus dramatically reducing economic opportunities for Black populations. In essence, progressive national infrastructure was constructed with the intent to harm Black communities and create difficulties for generations to come.
Communities affected by redlining and racial segregation also faced transportation difficulties, a factor Lans describes is “keeping people unhealthy and in poverty.” While richer White populations migrated to suburbs, many low-income Black and Latine communities remained in cities. Public transportation reflected increasing residential segregation: Transit systems in lower-income, typically Black communities tend to provide poorer, inefficient service compared to transit systems serving richer communities, typically White suburban populations. This can hinder access to grocery markets as a 30-minute ride on a nicer bus translates into a 90-minute ride on a poorer-quality bus. For low-income families, the time cost of accessing healthy food becomes far too high, significantly reducing accessibility. Transportation difficulties can also mean less accessibility to healthcare, another factor intertwined with community health.
Today, almost 100 years later, Boston ranks among the top 20 racially segregated U.S. cities. Boston’s Black population is primarily concentrated in Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan, communities that also have sizable Latine populations. Dorchester and Roxbury have significant food access disparities: West Roxbury is officially classified as a food desert, yet inequity is evident in both communities, as well as other low-income cities around the Greater Boston area.
The legacy of food apartheid can be partially attributed to supermarket redlining, reflecting a larger nationwide problem. Supermarkets tend to relocate from lower-income “high-risk” areas to wealthier suburbs, historically following White migration from inner cities to suburbs. As a result, residents of lower-income areas may be miles away from their nearest source of fresh, nutritious food. Lans extends the analysis of this problem, noting that Black and Latine communities are hit hardest as they disproportionately make up these low-income areas. To worsen matters, fast-food chains and easily accessible corner stores sell mainly non-nutritious “junk” food. Available fresh food, if there is any, is then much more expensive than ultra-processed alternatives, worsening the lack of access to healthy foods by low-income residents.
The combination of declining suppliers of fresh foods and rising suppliers of unhealthy foods also causes Black and Brown communities to experience disproportionately bad health. These individuals face higher rates of heart attacks and metabolic diseases such as diabetes and high blood pressure. Health effects are intergenerational: Children in these communities are more susceptible to obesity and metabolic diseases, creating unfair disadvantages from the start. Lans, who studies the history of racial health disparities, believes this phenomenon “ties into narratives of poor people and people of color being unfit to be parents.” The guilt of the family’s poor health is often placed on the mother instead of systems in place that prevent children from eating healthy.
Working Toward Food Equity
Yet these multi-layered structural obstacles are being overcome: Residents and government figures are noticing the huge health disparities in areas with a lack of food access and taking action. In Lawrence, an initiative by the Lawrence General Hospital granted $2.5 million to bodegas to create an aisle of fresh foods. Contrary to popular belief, the demand for healthy food is clearly present in Lawrence, and this increase in access has led to a significant increase in healthy food purchases by residents.
Passionate residents are also working bottom-up to increase healthy food access. One community-based operation working for food justice is About Fresh, a nonprofit developed to bring fresh food to communities who need it. The concept came about when co-founder Josh Trautwein witnessed one of the only grocery stores in his town shut down, leaving thousands of residents with virtually no access to nutritious food. Fresh Truck, one component of the company, focuses on bridging geographical distance from grocery stores and increasing residents’ purchasing power. In locations all across Greater Boston, residents are visited by a scheduled truck with a wide selection of fresh produce.
Fresh Truck, in its ninth year of operation, has become an important part of many Boston communities. In an interview with the HPR, About Fresh team member Victoria Strickland emphasized that community members are counting on the Fresh Truck to “come through every week” and that “consistency is a big value” for the organization. Aside from making fresh foods physically accessible, Fresh Truck also enhances financial access. Strickland cites Fresh Truck produce as “hyper-affordable” with fresh items available “20-30% lower than in your traditional grocery stores.”
Fresh Connect, a debit card program, is another part of About Fresh looking to address health disparities by financially assisting residents with purchasing healthy, nutritious foods. The card is prepaid by corporate sponsors, healthcare institutions, and donors. In practice, eligible consumers receive a debit card with which they can purchase healthy food items from eligible retailers, including Fresh Truck, Stop & Shops, and farmers markets. Fresh Connect aims to “close the gap of food accountability” and “get people invested in eliminating food insecurity,” Strickland says. Since 2020, Fresh Connect has been making a substantial impact on consumers in the Greater Boston area and throughout the Northeast: Over 700 shoppers are enrolled, and the program has provided over $300,000 in financial assistance for purchasing healthy foods. The program is looking to expand nationally, recruiting eligible retailers and benefiting consumers.
Entrepreneurial initiatives are also increasing healthy food access across Boston. Life Alive, a local cafe, aims to provide healthy, nutritious meals to those who may sacrifice nutrition on a time constraint. In an interview with the HPR, Heidi Feinstein, the founder of Life Alive, emphasized that “food connects to everything from our physical health to our mental health and to the climate.” When asked if Life Alive increased healthy food access in Lowell, Mass., a community facing significant food disparity, Feinstein replied “without a doubt,” citing the restaurant’s physical and financial accessibility to residents. Feinstein is also currently launching Hearth Food Garden, a community space that provides quick access to healthy foods and empowers local producers. Through Hearth Food Garden, Feinstein wants to “improve our food security” and create a “local food industry” across New England. By making healthy food more readily available and increasing awareness about nutrition, Feinstein’s efforts help to tackle food disparities in Boston while also providing local employment.
Uprooting Food Apartheid
In addition to building agency in food-insecure communities, top-down approaches to improving access to fresh food in low-income areas are equally important. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu acknowledges the problem of food disparity in Boston and has announced promising policies to lessen the gap, namely fostering urban agriculture, encouraging small-scale retail, and increasing residents’ purchasing power. Similarly, the Massachusetts Food Trust program has been working to improve access to healthy foods among the state’s low-income neighborhoods. Since 2018, the program has improved access to food for over 225,000 residents. Incorporating nutritional education in public school curriculum can also have a massive impact on how children view and interact with food: Lans emphasizes that schools “can be a lifeline” because “they can teach children how to eat properly and they can give them food,” which is particularly important in low-income communities.
Education is an essential part of uprooting food apartheid. While increasing access to fresh food and even building more supermarkets in low-income, low-access areas is important for Boston’s underserved communities, it is only a starting point. A combination of lack of transportation, and long work hours means that many residents simply do not have the time to cook. Providing a source of fresh food is not enough to remedy food disparities rooted in historical racism: Culinary classes and nutrition education are also needed and are in high demand by residents. Additionally, misleading advertising on food products encourages consumption of non-nutritious food. These factors combined make fast food and processed food the most practical choice for residents, with cooking fresh food regularly becoming almost impossible. Education is an important next step for serving food justice to low-income communities.
In order to achieve food equity, amplifying community voices and instituting policies that can bring systemic change is a necessity. Food apartheid, rooted in a long history of redlining, oppresses communities of color in low-income areas. A lack of transportation, nutrition education, and time to cook causes intergenerational health disparities and reduces the quality of life for residents. Community members, politicians, and institutions have begun to dismantle food disparity, finding creative and effective ways to increase community access to fresh foods. There is still significant room for progress in bridging food disparities among Boston’s communities, but beneficial movements are already underway.
Image by Isaiah Villar licensed under the Unsplash License.
