Read on Twitter
THREAD: I started a debate on Twitter about the food desert theory yesterday. It was an accident, I was spurred by wondering why I -- and maybe you too -- believe explanations for social problems that have no basis in reality 1 https://www.usnews.com/news/cities/articles/2019-12-27/why-food-deserts-arent-the-key-cause-of-nutritional-inequality
The theory came from Britain decades ago, it held that low-income urban neighborhoods have higher obesity and worse nutrition because there are no supermarkets with healthy options, just convenience stores full of junk food. I immediately believed it when I heard it 2
Yesterday a colleague said blandly that it wasn't true. What? I investigated and found that multiple studies show that due to urban density, low income urban people are often closer to supermarkets than suburbanites, and those who live near a good supermarket don't eat better 3
But but but MY PRIORS! I saw people reacting to my Tweet going through the same grief process (including some denial). Some tweeps thought that if food desert theory is wrong, poor people are 100% responsible for unhealthy eating and reacted (positively or neg) based on that. 4
But it doesn't follow at all, there are many ways environment affects us beside supermarket availability, maybe Doritos and Redi-Whip are more attractive if you have a stressful daily existence, for example, no matter what choices you have. 5
So we shouldn't defend a bad theory on the false assumption that the alternative is dumping on poor people. More generally, I ought to (and dare I say you ought to) check out the explanations we hold dear against the evidence, even if it's a jolt to our priors. The End 6.
