I’ve heard this term a couple of time but never actually looked into it, and it is such an alien concept to me right now. I apologise in advance for sounding dumb here.
I can understand slums and favelas having a harder time getting access to fresh food, but how come entire government-recognised and incorporated neighbourhoods with electricity, water and all those more complex services can’t have small grocery stores for basic healthy things like rice?
Basically the grocery stores (like everything) have become extremely monopolistic in most of the country. There’s only one or two grocery store companies in most areas and they push everyone else out of business.
Then they seem to maximize profits. They close the locations where they make less money and there’s more theft. Pushing everyone to the more profitable stores leaving areas very under served.
Grocery stores, especially small independent ones can ha e pretty slim margins and will have trouble competing on price with the larger stores.
I used to live inbetween the sort of hood part of town and the country club/gated communities side of town. I drove 5 minutes further to not go to the grocery store towards the bad side of town. They make less money at these stores and don’t take care of them, don’t stock the shelves or do maintenance, people avoid them. They close them down.
Basically you need a car to get to a grocery store outside of a few major cities with good public transit like NYC. American suburban planning makes grocery stores be hard to access for poor people and then profit motives make it worse.