Buying groceries a long trek for family in Winnipeg food desert
Families face tough decisions between eating and heating
Winnipeg's poorest families face a long and expensive journey to get groceries because they live in a virtual food desert.
Using a combination of data from Manitoba Health's food handlerregistry and store listings from company websites, the CBC I-Team hasidentified and mapped 74 grocers that met criteria generally used by groups that study food access and community health.
The analysis reveals a vast area at the core of the city spanning over 30 square kilometres in which no major grocers operate.
Groups that study food security generally consider one kilometre as being on the outer limits of what is considered accessible for all residents. The map below illustrates a one-kilometre radius around each grocery store used in the analysis. Areas that fall outside these buffers zones are considered less accessible.
Howwe chose which food seller to include in our analysis:
In collaboration with experts that study food access and community health, the CBC I-Team focusedonly on grocersthat met the following criteria:
- A customer could conceivably and consistently purchase the items found inHealth Canada's National nutritious food basket.
- Is a medium- to full-sized grocer (minimum of approximately 10,000 square feet).
- The store operates as part of a stable grocery chain.
According to the city's neighbourhood census data, nearly 70,000 people call the food desert home.
Katherine Thomas, who lives on Burrows Avenue, is among them. Thomas has seven mouths to feed on a fixed income and often has to choose between paying bills or putting food on the table.
Thomas relies heavily onschool lunch programs for her children and often dips into community supports such asthe food bank.
"It's really hard," Thomas said."You feel lost when you don't have enough food."
Once a month,Thomas goes grocery shopping. She has to enlist the help of one of her older children because she buys in bulk to make the money go further.
"Usually we wait from half an hour to over an hour.We just stand out there or stay inside if it's really cold," Thomas said."It's really hard to get cabs, especially on cheque days because everybody is calling cabs."
Thomas saidshe used to grocery shop at a Giant Tiger store within relative walking distance from her home, although she had to be creative when carrying groceries back home using wagons in the summer and sleighs in the winter.
However, Thomas found there was little in the way of fresh produceand an abundance of processed and frozen foods which didn't last as long in her home.
Sometimes I think, 'Food or utilities?'-Katherine Thomas
"There's too much junk food, " she said of Giant Tiger's selection.
""If we get too much fast foods, then our foods go fast."
None of this surprises Stefan Epp-Koop, the acting executive director of Food Matters Manitoba.
"People with limited food budgets are having to make difficult choices on how they get home,"Epp-Koop said, adding thatin the food desert, transportation costs often cut deep into already limited family food budgets.
"I think that what worries me isthat people are going to be forced to make bad food choices, and not because they want to but because they have to," Epp-Koop said."It's all that's available to them."
There are also larger costs to society.
"If people aren't able to access healthy food, they won't be as healthy and we'll end up paying for that as a city and a province,"Epp-Koopsaid.
"The corner stores are really expensive. Even to get a roll of toilet paper is a dollar," said Thomas.
Although data from the provincial food-handler licensing database shows there are a handful of corner stores and small, independently-owned grocery stores in the area,which help supplement people'sdietary needs, prices are generally steeper and the selection is poor.
Comparing the prices of a sample shop consistingof 10 items found on Health Canada's National Nutritious Food Basket, the CBC I-Team found that the final bill at a corner store in theChalmers neighbourhoodwas more than 36 per cent higher than at a full-service supermarket in the same region.
"It's common to kind of rag on corner stores, but you won't find me doing that," said Donald Benham, hunger and poverty awareness manager withWinnipeg Harvest.
"There are an awful lot of small business owners who are trying to serve people who are underserved, and they have varying degrees of selection that are available. Some of them do try and have fresh meat, some of them have frozen meat. Some of them have some types of produce and so on," he explained.
Still,Benham agrees that access to a full-service grocery store is key for the city's poorest people living in the food desert.
"It's a long way to carry groceries if you don't have access to a vehicle," he said."In the long term,what we really need is a way of getting people to the grocery stores in a way that doesn't cost them any extra money."
Benham believes the city's bus service could be part of the solution:"One of the things we're asking people to look atis maybe we should change the way we approach public transit."
At Food Matters Manitoba, Stefan Epp-Koop agrees.
"I do think that government, particularly the city government, has some role to play in making sure that Manitobans, that Winnipeggers have access to good food," he said.
The city's core isn't the only food desert in Winnipeg. On Thursday,the I-Team sheds light on the challenges that residents in suburban food deserts face.
_(720p).jpg)
 OFFICIAL HD MUSIC VIDEO.jpg)
.jpg)
