Neighbourhoods are hungry for access to nutritious food
Too many areas in city qualify as ‘food swamps,’ Public Health says
Toronto is more of a swamp than a desert, according to Toronto Public Health. A food swamp that is. The term refers to the overabundance of unhealthy food like chips and frozen pizzas and less access to food that’s better for you, like fresh vegetables.
Toronto Public Health has mapped the entire city to measure access to healthier food within walking distance, and found many neighbourhoods would qualify as swamps, with many more less healthy food stores than healthier ones.
“In Toronto there is access to food. The problem is there’s access to unhealthy food,” said Barbara Emanuel, manager of Toronto Food Strategy at Toronto Public Health.
According to data presented in the updated food strategy, which calculates the ratio of healthier to less healthy food store locations within a 1-kilometre walking distance from each city block, on average there are four less healthy food stores for every healthier food outlet.
The less healthy stores were mainly convenience stores, well stocked with candy bars and processed food.
Many supermarkets and specialty stores with fresher options such as butcher shops and fish stores were categorized as healthier.
“The food swamp or the lack of access to healthy food is a much bigger problem than the food desert,” said.
International authorities have identified food deserts, where households lack access to available food in walking distance. “There are very few places in Toronto that you can get no food in walking distance,” Emanuel added.
Food swamps are found in both high and lower income neighbourhoods throughout the city, and there was no significant correlation between a neighbourhood’s income and its score in terms of healthier food access.
But there were several neighbourhoods where low income and a low score overlapped, and that, said Emanuel, is where there’s the biggest concern.
“In a high-income area you might also have dominance of unhealthy food but people have a choice and can get in their car and buy healthier food, she said. Often, lower income people don’t have that option.
Emanuel cautions geography is only one part of the equation when it comes to food.
“It’s about income and poverty of course as well as geographic access,” she said.
For Valerie Tarasuk, a professor of nutritional sciences in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and faculty of medicine at the University of Toronto who works in food security, other issues like the cost of transit and rent come into play.
“Food insecurity is a very serious problem and it’s for sure a very serious problem in Toronto,” she said.
“Most people that are struggling to put food on the table are struggling because of the tension between their income and their rent,” she said.
Tarasuk said she does not know how much proximity says about what people eat and said even at supermarkets that do carry healthy fresh foods, there has been a “creep” of very unhealthy foods such as frozen pizzas, chicken nuggets and fries.
“Maybe what’s more important is to make sure that there’s nutritional food available at reasonable cost to people,” she added.
Debbie Field, executive director of FoodShare Toronto, said she sees food swamps “everywhere” in her work in communities.
She would like to see Toronto adopt a rule that when new housing is built there has to be access to healthy food within walking distance. FoodShare is already at work delivering produce to food swamps across the city through a program called Mobile Good Food Markets, she said.
Field, who lives in Parkdale, shops regularly at local produce stores, something people in many neighbourhoods in Scarborough, for example, cannot.
“If we want people to eat fresh produce, it has to be where we live,” she said. “Think about it, if you have only two or three dollars in your pocket and all you can see is packaged dead food, what choice do you have?” Barbara Emanuel, manager of Toronto Food Strategy at Toronto Public Health, says it’s worrying that there were several neighbourhoods where low income and a low healthy-food score overlapped in a recent study.