Into the (Food) Desert: A Food Desert Simulation
Objective: Explore the causal relationship between food deserts and presumed health outcomes of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Design: Simulate food desert conditions by having a subject eat only what he could purchase in convenience stores for 30 days on a financially constrained budget. Setting: Conducted as a field experiment utilizing local convenience stores. Subjects: One of the coauthors acted as the subject. Results: The results indicate that typical measures of negative health outcomes associated with food deserts, such as weight gain, elevated cholesterol, and elevated blood sugar, were not supported. However, the intake of many micronutrients was significantly below recommended levels. Conclusions: Results suggest that further investigation of other diet-induced illnesses should have greater attention in food desert research.
