The creepy lefty lexicon of Orwellian political phrases now has a new one. Food swamp. That's what happens when people have too many food choices and too much food.
Here's The Atlantic warning us about "food swamps".
For a study published in November in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, researchers from the University of Connecticut’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity compared the obesity rate of U.S. counties to their ratio of fast-food restaurants and convenience stores to grocery stores and supermarkets—their level of food-swampiness, in other words.
The food swamps had about four unhealthy options for each healthy one. Food swamps were a strong predictor of obesity rates—even stronger than food deserts were.
Similarly, a 2011 longitudinal study found that nearby supermarkets didn’t improve people’s diets much overall. But people—low-income men in particular—did eat more fast food when there was more fast food nearby.
Fast-food restaurants are more prevalent in areas where large numbers of people of color live. African Americans and Latinos also have higher obesity rates than whites, and this research suggests the two trends might be related.
It's almost as if...
1. The Food Desert is a myth
2. People make decisions about what they want
3. Those decisions have consequences.
4. Obesity is a direct result of individual choices rather than some sort of corporate conspiracy
But no. Now that an Orwellian name has been coined. It's time to start in with more government intervention.
As a potential remedy, the food-swamp study authors suggest counties could introduce zoning restrictions that would reduce the number of fast-food joints while simultaneously increasing the number of grocery stores. But they should do so carefully. Los Angeles banned new fast-food restaurants in a low-income part of the city in 2008, but the measure was considered a failure after obesity rates there continued to rise.
5. Maybe government regulations aren't the answer.