Baltimore food policy officials have renamed what’s pretty much a household term now to describe a place where families lack nearby healthy food options and live in dire poverty, though the issue still remains a major problem in the city, according to a new report.
About 23.5 percent of Baltimore residents today live in “healthy food priority areas,” the city’s and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s new term for “food deserts.” The proportion represents a 1.5 percent decrease from 2015, or about 5,000 residents. In a report unveiled yesterday, researchers attributed the slight reduction to the opening of a single new Sav-a-Lot in East Baltimore that opened under a tax credit program.
Healthy food priority areas are still a harbinger of deep segregation. Researchers found 31.5 percent of Baltimoreans living in healthy food priority areas are black, compared to just 9 percent of whites. Children, who need good nutrition the most, are the most likely age group to live in such areas (28.3%).
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