A new bill recently proposed in the Mississippi Legislature to make healthier food more accessible in so-called “food deserts” comes wrapped in familiar language. It speaks of scarcity and injustice. It speaks as though salads have been embargoed and carrots require a passport.
Mississippi, we’re told, is dotted with vast nutritional wastelands. Entire counties supposedly wander through life without encountering a tomato. This framing isn’t unique. “Food deserts,” we‘re assured, exist in every part of America, from Appalachia to Los Angeles. The term has become a national lullaby. If people eat badly, it’s because geography has conspired against them.
The trouble is that this story is detached from reality.
Most Americans, including poor Americans, live within reach of a grocery store. They may not live next door to an organic co-op that stocks hand-massaged kale, but they’re rarely stranded with nothing but beef jerky and soda. What they do live near, almost without exception, are convenience stores, gas stations, dollar stores, and big-box retailers. And those places sell eggs, rice, frozen vegetables, oats, peanut butter, beans and bananas. These aren’t exotic items airlifted in by the National Guard. They are cheap, boring, and everywhere.
The food desert myth thrives because it turns a hard problem into a flattering one. It swaps choice for fate. It tells people they’re victims of the map rather than captains of their habits. That may comfort some. It should alarm the majority. When poor health is blamed on imaginary scarcity, no one has to talk about what people actually eat. No one has to talk about deep fryers doubling as religion.
The myth is harmful because it trains policy on the wrong target. Instead of teaching people how to cook, more stores are built. Instead of encouraging discipline, excuses are subsidized. Instead of asking why fresh food is ignored, it's treated as though it doesn't exist. The result is tragic and absurd: aisles of produce left untouched like radioactive exhibits while frozen pizza flies out the door like contraband.
Eating well, the common refrain goes, is too expensive. That claim collapses the moment it meets a receipt. Lentils are cheap. Beans are cheap. Potatoes are cheap. Frozen vegetables are cheap. Whole chickens cost less per pound than many boxed dinners. What’s expensive is convenience and packaging. What drains the wallet isn’t broccoli, but food engineered to be eaten behind a steering wheel.
Healthy food feels expensive because it asks something in return. It asks for time. It asks for a pan. It asks for the faint courage required to operate a stove. Processed food, by contrast, asks only for a microwave and a sense of resignation. One costs more money. The other costs more effort, which is now treated as a form of oppression.
Then there’s the claim that healthy ingredients aren’t widely available. This argument would carry more weight if bananas were grown only in monasteries. Nearly every grocery store in America sells them. So do many corner shops. So do gas stations, usually next to a rack of lottery tickets and a lonely apple. Fresh food isn’t hidden away. It’s simply unglamorous. It doesn’t come in cartoon boxes or glow under fluorescent lights like a prize on a game show.
There’s something oddly idiotic about the food desert narrative. It casts public officials as heroic deliverers of lettuce. It casts citizens as stranded innocents. And it casts personal responsibility as a villain best kept offstage. In this story, the human mouth is never accountable. Only zoning laws are.
The United States is unique for many reasons, some admirable, some strange. It’s a country where people drive past three grocery stores to buy fried dough and then file a complaint against the universe. This is called a crisis of access. It looks more like a crisis of preference.
This doesn’t make poverty irrelevant. It’s real. But it’s not the whole story. Money influences choices, but it doesn’t fully determine them. People on tight budgets have always cooked. Soup was invented by the poor. So was stew. So was bread. These foods weren’t born in think tanks. They were born in kitchens with nothing in them.
Calling America a land of food deserts appeals to many, but it misrepresents the country itself. This is the United States, not a ration-line economy. Stores exist. Choice exists. The real desert isn’t on the map. It’s in the imagination.