Wealth, Nutrition, & the Cost of Convenience
There is no shortage of junk food in my neighborhood when I want it. Starting over means living in a lower-income neighborhood riddled with fast food restaurants. Growing up in the suburbs there were fast food restaurants around us, but we had a healthy balance between poor food options and grocery stores with fresh ingredients. My mother grew up in a food swamp, that is a neighborhood that lacks an adequate grocery store, but is full of fast food options. She remembered there being one small store in her neighborhood but they hardly ever offered quality fresh produce. As a result my mother’s family survived on canned vegetables, resulting in my mother, aunts, and grandmother all living with hypertension.
It seems that separating us from fresh food sources and making processed foods cheaper and more convenient was the key to our health’s undoing. Fast food options with loads of ingredients we cannot name give us a dopamine hit that a salad just won’t cut. We are now hardwired to crave delicious convenience foods. The salt, fat, and sugar in fast foods has provided an undeniable high that will take generations for us to shake. Even as someone who grew up with homemade meals we still had moments where convenience and the desire for a treat resulted in trips to the drive-thru for an entree, with sides being prepared at home (my mother did this often to save time) and the result became an affinity for foods that give us a taste of home without the bothersome act of cooking it ourselves.
One often wonders why so many fast food restaurants are concentrated in poorer neighborhoods. When a question of this nature comes to mind, look no further than the U.S. government. Among the many programs that littered the Black community during the era of civil rights, the government of the era (mainly the Nixon administration) made it their mission to litter the Black community with fast food options. Through marketing campaigns, entrepreneurship programs, and financial incentives for restaurateurs, the U.S. government successfully inundated low income communities with food that has caused generations of obesity, preventable illness, and early death.
Nixon asserted that minority communities needed enterprise for growth, but the gag is, it was already there. Before government intervention and racist violence threatened our livelihood, Black communities were thriving with entrepreneurship and enterprise. It wasn’t until racism and federal intervention stepped in attempting to “make things better,” as they so often do, that once thriving independent communities turned into co-dependent ghettos subject to working for the bare minimum and looking over your shoulder in hopes that you aren’t subjected to unwarranted violence all while navigating unhealthy conditions.
They succeeded using a tried and true play, pitting us against each other. COINTELPRO infiltrated Black movements, causing them to fail from within and the same can be said for the infiltration of fast food restaurants into low-income, majority Black communities. The illusion of wealth and inclusion. Many of the fast food franchise owners in these neighborhoods are Black. An attempt to introduce a class of wealth and entrepreneurship that allegedly eluded minority communities. Multi-media marketing campaigns celebrated Black managers, workers, and owners at these franchises and Black celebrities signed up to endorse their products. They successfully used our aspirations for wealth and desire for visibility and validation against us. How many times have you read an article that celebrates families, couples, and individual owners of multiple fast food franchises? In a society built on wealth and status by any means necessary we cannot begin to be surprised that our health and well-being have been put on the chopping block.
The idea of representation being enough is a ploy that is constantly used to get low-income people to accept the scraps they are given. By using afro-centric decor, uniforms, and advertising, we are more likely to support the business venture, even if it’s to our detriment. Being seen has far too often overshadowed what we are actually looking at.
Investing in a program designed to embrace Black entrepreneurship was a step in the right direction, but disproportionately investing in a business model that should have never been scaled on a global level in the first place, was where the train veered off the tracks. One can argue that the consequences of riddling low-income communities with a swamp of unhealthy food options was unforeseen, but there must have been a reason why Black franchisees could only open restaurants in ‘low-income,’ a.k.a. Black and Hispanic neighborhoods. America has built its culture around fast food and convenience eating. Things cannot be changed simply by throwing a few healthier food options in low-income neighborhoods and praying they survive, we must make a multi-tiered effort to change our narrative surrounding food. The luxury of going through the drive-thru on the way home, or ordering from an app and having the food on our doorstep in less than an hour, must give way to whole meals that come before the over-processed options.
It is important to understand the effect that access has on what we eat. When food deserts lack fresh produce and groceries mostly consist of canned, bagged, and boxed dinners there is no wonder that our rates of obesity and preventable health issues are off the charts. A single parent working a double cannot expect their latch-key children to cook themselves a full meal from scratch, but they can use the microwave and heat up something that is pre-made. Overworked and underpaid people often do not have the time it takes to dedicate themselves to cooking a full meal, they rely on convenience because they must work to barely get by and the bills won’t wait for you to cook a pot of greens, roast some chicken, and bake cornbread from scratch. In order to understand just how we have gotten to this point, we have to look at a number of factors, many of which are steeped in racism.
Wealth disparities cause more and more working class people to rely on extra hours and side hustles to make ends meet. Barely, leaving room for the time it takes to dedicate yourself to cooking and eating a meal with whole ingredients. This can be true for individuals living below or at the poverty line, let alone families who are doing so with children. As a nation, convenience has been indoctrinated into our culture, even at the detriment of things that matter. While other nations make sitting down and eating a whole meal with family a priority that is woven deeply into the fabric of their being, we praise filling every waking moment with work, the idea of work, and hobbies that turn into more work. This can be said for Americans regardless of racial and economic background, but for the most financially vulnerable the cost of convenience has become expensive.
In addition to the lack of time for healthy meals, living in food swamps has made it nearly impossible for members of lower-income communities to have access to healthy food options. This is a phenomenon that has existed for decades and has effectively changed the fabric of our dietary cravings. Basic, but highly addictive ingredients like salt and sugar have altered our taste buds in a way that is irreversible without self-intervention and better access. It is not enough to simply put grocery stores with fresh produce or restaurants with healthier options in disadvantaged neighborhoods, one must also change the culture around diet. That requires allotting more time for home-cooked meals and reducing poor ingredients in foods that we have grown accustomed to eating.
Wealthy neighborhoods were not accosted, for generations, with poor food choices and little to nothing else. For the wealthier members of society fast food is often treated as it should be, a once-in-a-while treat, not the sole means of nutrition. Having grown up in the suburbs of Maryland I too was only allowed to eat fast food once in a while. It was never a requirement because we did not have enough money to eat anything else. I was privileged enough to grow up near a grocery store with two working parents. One had the wherewithal to realize that her poor food habits were affecting her health and would do so to her children and the other grew up in another country and did not have an affinity for fast food until he moved to the U.S. Canned vegetables gave way to fresh only ingredients, and our dinner plates were never without something that grew from the ground.
This set of circumstances led to my insight into what a healthier diet should look like, though in adulthood my choices have been less than stellar. Unfortunately, for many lower-income Americans whatever we can get a hold of takes precedence over what would be the healthiest option. The Black American diet, along with many other habits we have acquired over the centuries, is a direct result of racial biases and a President whose seemingly well meaning initiative was overshadowed by corporate greed and internalized racism. Creating an entrepreneurial initiative surrounding Black franchise ownership and management roles was a noble goal, though it would not have been needed if Black communities weren’t gutted and removed in the first place. The problem is that internalized racism (or the actions of a group of people who knew exactly what they were doing) relegated this new venture to fast food franchises only, and further limited those franchisees to neighborhoods that made up mostly Black and Brown people. This was in the 1960s and the result was a rise in forgotten communities that have now grown accustomed to the cravings that can only be curbed by something that comes out of a drive-thru. This has become yet another generational curse that we have to break. A habit that our mothers and grandmothers picked up for survival that we have to unlearn and make a conscious effort not to teach to our children.
In order to change the relationship between low-income communities and food we must first change the culture, but that is nearly impossible to do with rappers and other cultural figure-heads selling specialized meals at fast food chains and jingles sung by some of our icons. It seems as if every effort towards progress that has been presented to us post the Civil Rights and Black Power eras came with fine print that stated we have to compromise ourselves in order to see success. Being in a financial disadvantage for hundreds of years has placed us in a mode of getting to the bag no matter what. We have been stuffed between the proverbial rock and a hard place, which isn’t the fault of those who seize the opportunities presented to them.
The same mentality that gives us the drive to hustle our way out of poor financial situations, thus breaking the curse of poverty, is the same drive that we have to employ when reapproaching our diet and way of living. Convenience foods should not make up the majority of our diet. They should be reserved for those special occasions that bring joy and excitement. More importantly, the most financially vulnerable people of our country should not have to rely solely on unhealthy food options to survive.
