NAVIGATING THE TOXIC TRIANGLE IN BAYVIEW HUNTERS POINT

Food Desert on the Hunters Point Hilltop located in the heavily industrialized southeast sector of San Francisco adjacent to a system of federal Superfund sites at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. There are no grocery stores on the Hunters Point Hilltop.

The USDA defines a food desert as a region without access to nutritious, affordable, quality whole food. Food deserts are areas with a 20% or greater poverty rate and where a third of residents live more than a mile from a supermarket, farmers market or local grocery store. In The Grocery Gap, Food Trust researchers found African Americans 400% more likely to live in a community that lacks a full service supermarket.

Ron Finley is a food justice advocate in south Los Angeles. In his community “it is easier to get alcohol than an organic apple.”

“A food desert is a place where there is absolutely no chance, opportunity, or hope to get any kind of healthy nutritious food. The food that is distributed in a food desert is sub-par, and often comes from different parts of the world. It is sprayed with toxins and poisons and picked before it’s time. On top of that there is a proliferation of fast food, which a lot of time is the only option residents of these communities have…the drive-thrus are killing more people than the drive-bys.”

Joel Fuhrman, MD coined the term, “Fast Food Genocide” because most people “don’t understand the depth and breadth of the harm as a large segment of our society eats a diet worse than the sad and dangerous Standard American Diet(SAD)”. Fuhrman cites research showing compared with neighborhoods with access to…