Abstract
It has become more or less widely accepted as common sense that nutrition is related to health and wellness and that poor nutrition and/or unhealthy eating will lead to higher rates of obesity and higher rates of chronic diseases like diabetes, stroke, heart disease, cancer, and ultimately to death. Thus, in order to move beyond the obvious, we must consider and explore the other factors that lead to or result in poor nutrition and ultimately poor health. In this chapter, we explore the role that social class plays in shaping individual access to a healthy diet, and we consider the role that social structure, particularly social and racial housing segregation, plays in shaping the access that entire populations, e.g., African Americans in urban centers, have to healthy, nutritious food. In our case study on food deserts we also examine the role that perceptions and ideologies play in shaping food choices. We begin this chapter by arguing that hegemonic ideologies that connect racial/ethnic identity and food are very powerful in shaping individuals’ food choices even in the face of common sense understandings of the importance of nutrition in leading a healthy life.
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Notes
- 1.
When Tiger Woods won his first Masters, Fuzzy Zeller remarked that he supposed this meant they’d eat fried chicken and watermelon for dinner. The Masters winner chooses the clubhouse dinner for all previous Masters champions.
- 2.
Though these diseases kill more Americans than other diseases or events (such as accidents or homicides), a matter of significant concern when considering the overall health, morbidity and mortality of African Americans are the impact of two phenomenon that rob African American communities of their young: homicide and HIV/AIDS and thus we feel it is critical to note the impact of these producers of early death on the state of African American health (LaVeist, 2005).
- 3.
Writing this paper we learned that 13 or 14 miners were killed in mining accidents in West Virginia. To be clear we do recognize that there has been a long history of workplace violence. Recently, in August 2010, a beer truck driver shot and killed eight co-workers in Connecticut. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100804/ap_on_re_us/us_beer_distributor_shootings A postal worker, Jennifer Sanmarco, killed eight co-workers in Oleta, California. This is the most deadly serial murders of co-workers by a woman and in 2003 Dough Williams shot 14 co-workers, killing six at a Lockheed Martin aircraft plant in Meriden, Mississippi.
- 4.
We note that access to health care and health insurance plays a major role in producing race and class disparities, but that is not our area of concern in this chapter. See LaVeist, http://tlaveist.blogspot.com/2009/10/are-people-in-government-health.html.
- 5.
The results of an analysis of census data for counties in the Deep South indicate that counties in which African Americans are disproportionately represented (greater than 40% of the county population) have infant mortality rates that are many times greater than the rate for counties in which African Americans are not disproportionately represented. Furthermore, in many cases, the infant mortality rates of these counties are more similar to those of countries in the developing world than to the rate in the USA.
- 6.
Access to health care, both pre- and postnatal, is also significantly linked to infant mortality. Mothers who receive prenatal care are more likely to deliver healthy babies of normal birth weight. Similarly, when mothers and their babies receive health care, check ups, and vaccinations in the first year of life, the babies are far less likely to die in the first year. Finally, mother’s age is also a significant predictor of low-birth weight and ultimately of infant mortality. Babies born to teenage mothers are at significantly higher risk for low birth weight and infant mortality. Because teen childbearing is significantly more likely among African Americans than whites, this stands as another factor in the racial disparities in infant mortality.
- 7.
We highly recommend Kai Wright’s essay on his father’s early death at age 57. His father, a surgeon, suffered from many of the hidden costs of being African American that Shapiro describes (Wright, 2006).
- 8.
For a podcast dealing directly with food deserts in rural Mississippi see: http://www.youtube.com/user/msussrc#p/a/u/0/i5ZnNMU72Sk.
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Hattery, A.J., Smith, E. (2011). Health, Nutrition, Access to Healthy Food and Well-Being Among African Americans. In: Lemelle, A., Reed, W., Taylor, S. (eds) Handbook of African American Health. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9616-9_3
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