When BMI meets SES

When I was preparing to write this blog entry, I began to reminisce on my old days teaching in Bowen Homes, a housing project in Atlanta that was torn down last year. I remember there being a library, a supermarket, a school, and a community center right there in the midst of the neighborhood. I remember thinking how “sheltered” my students were, because they rarely got out of the hood. Everything that they needed, or so thought, was within walking distance for them.

What brought me to this walk down memory lane was an article that I had read in the Washington Post (WP), called The High Cost of Poverty. The article speaks about how you actually have to be rich, in order to be poor; how it actually is expensive to live in poverty. Because I have lately been “living my life like it’s healthy,” their information about grocery prices and access to quality groceries really struck a chord with me. Were the residents of Bowen Homes, my students, in a similar boat with some of the disenfranchised community members that the article spoke of?

I started to play back the structure of the community, the layout of the surrounding streets. I remember the O.K. Supermarket on the corner, right when you make that right on Wilkes Circle, but I could not remember an actual grocery store. My mind traveled down Donald Lee Hollowell, or Bankhead Highway if you’ve been in Atlanta awhile, Hamilton E. Holmes Drive, and even Joseph E. Lowery Boulevard. I sat there for awhile, trying to will a grocery store into my memory, but nothing. This led me to believe that either most Bowen Homes residents shopped at the O.K. Supermarket, or that they had to drive or ride for miles in order to get to a grocery store.

The WP article claimed that grocery prices are much more expensive in urban areas, and I am sure that we confirm these claims, as we have all had our taste of price gauging. For example, they assert that a loaf of white bread in an urban supermarket might cost $2.99, with wheat costing $3.79. A gallon of milk, which I’m sure is most likely whole, costs $4.99. Conversely, a Safeway in a nearby suburban area basks in cheaper prices. For that same white bread, $1, and $1.19 for the wheat. And instead of $5, the milk costs $3.49. Now these might not reflect the prices near your home, milk is on sale at the Kroger near my house for $1.98, but you get the point. Grocery prices in urban areas are most likely to be more expensive than prices in suburban areas. What ends up happening is that these residents not only spend more money on their groceries, but they end up buying less healthy items for cheaper prices, which contributes to the high levels of obesity in low income areas.

The Office of the Surgeon General released a report in 2001 claimed that women of lower socioeconomic status were 50% more likely to be obese than those with higher socioeconomic status. We know that with obesity come generations of unhealthy living, heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and early deaths. People in these communities, somewhat because of access and resources, are set up for an unhealthy lifestyle, which really creates a cycle within the family. A coincidence?