Chicago's Food Deserts Are Hazardous To Health

ADDITIONAL COVERAGE:

MAP: Where 100+ of the largest/most well-known grocery stores are

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Here's a challenge for you: on your way to work tomorrow, count the number of full service grocery stores you pass.

Fresh, nutritious food might be just around the corner in your neighborhood, but in some parts of Chicago, residents rely on stores that are more likely to stock Cheetos and Hawaiian Punch than apples and whole grain bread. And it gets worse.

FOX Chicago has uncovered reasons why the government might be contributing to unhealthy eating.

In some neighborhoods, you can go to the grocery store--or the grocery store (because they're only blocks apart). One full-service supermarket after another.

In other Chicago neighborhoods, the food store options look a little different, a lot different actually. Not a lot of full service, not a lot of anything.

In interviews with several small grocers, FOX found that some don't carry any vegetables or fruit, because, said one, "the coolers are broken." And another said he didn't carry meat because it wasn't the "regular" kind.

No Jewel, no Dominick's, but plenty of "mom and pop" places that sell plenty of chips and candy. Here, stores are busy stocking their shelves with juice and soda--some of their most popular items, they said.

That, and the booze. Lots of alcohol, but little else. A virtual "food desert."

According to Mari Gallagher, a food desert researcher, Chicago's food desert has a little over 600 thousand residents and the vast majority are African Americans.

A third are children, more than a hundred thousand are single mothers.

"Most of the food is fried, high salt, high fat, sugary there's little in terms of nutritional content," said Gallagher, whose research and consulting group has published two major studies on the subject. "In some of the Chicago communities, a pineapple is considered exotic," Gallagher revealed.

For at least 20 percent of all Chicagoans, the nearest full service grocery store is twice as far as the nearest fast food restaurant.

"If it's where you're getting your food day in and day out," said Gallagher. "Your health over time will suffer."

But how barren is the food desert really?

FOX Chicago pinpointed the locations of the 16 largest or best-known grocery stores and supermarkets that sell fresh food, including fruit, vegetables, dairy, meats and grains.

There are more than 100 such stores within the city limits.

For starters, on the far north side of the city you'll find four Dominick's stores, two Happy Foods, a Whole Foods and an Aldi.

Also on the north side, there are six major grocery stores between West Foster and West Irving Park Roads, including two Jewels and two Aldis.

There are a nearly two dozen stores in the Lakeview and Lincoln Park neighborhoods, including three Treasure Islands, three Whole Foods and four Dominick's.

And between North Avenue and Roosevelt Road, west of the the Kennedy, we counted at least 14 major stores.

But move west and all of a sudden the number of grocery outlets with a full array of healthy foods begins to drop precipitously.

And then there's the south side. This area represents more than 40 square miles, and full service grocers are few and far between.

Felena Bunn grew up in the south side food desert.

"There was nothing there," said Bunn. "You really have to take like half a day to leave your neighborhood and go shopping."

Some 64 thousand people who live in Chicago food desert neighborhoods don't have a car. So, to get to a grocery store that often means taking a bus or the el and then transferring to another bus in addition to dragging your kids along with you, and hauling any number of heavy bags on and off crowded public transportation. Grocery shopping isn't necessarily as easy and simple as some people would like to believe.

So instead, like many other young people here, Bunn spent her teens and her twenties eating junk food. Only junk.

"I'd go across the street and have a pizza puff, a burger and some fries and a lot of soda, lots and lots of soda," said Bunn. "I didn't try to find healthier choices until I had problems with my blood pressure."

"By the time my kidneys were failing it was just way too late," explained Bunn as she prepared for a self-dialysis. "I did so much damage that it was pretty irreversible."

Despite warnings from "every doctor," Bunn was unable to reverse her fate due to the lack of available healthy foods in her area.

Courtney Nicholas, the associate director of minority health programs for the American Kidney Fund, can't believe that the government has allowed the food deserts to continue.

Nicholas said Felena's story is similar to thousands of others in Chicago. In fact, research by the Fund indicates a definite correlation between the city's food deserts and kidney disease.

"The highest rates of kidney failure are on the west and south sides of the city," said Nicholas. "There are thousands who have high blood pressure and diabetes, which are often