Hungry in the Heartland: Using Community Food Systems as a Strategy to Reduce Rural Food Deserts

Abstract

Despite community and policy efforts to improve Americans' eating behaviors, the majority of Americans still fail to meet fruit and vegetable intake recommendations and rates of overweight and obesity rise. These issues are particularly acute in limited-resource, rural communities where food access, availability, and pricing hinder residents' abilities to purchase fresh produce and healthy food options. Many overweight and obesity prevention and nutrition interventions attempt to improve eating habits by increasing knowledge and changing behavior; however, such interventions often do not incorporate local resources or consider environmental barriers of rural communities. Though there are numerous evaluation tools and measures for monitoring and assessing rural food environments, their greatest limitation is that they often do not consider qualitative data or inventory nontraditional sources of healthy food. Though many researchers and practitioners have promoted policy changes and supermarket interventions to change food environments, an alternative strategy is to design community-based food systems that are culturally appropriate, locally driven, and meaningful to local stakeholders. With a locally driven, participatory approach to changing food environments, true barriers to food access can be better understood and effective strategies designed. A diverse range of community food system tools is available to adapt programs to specific community needs and interests that are recommended to make sustainable changes at individual, community, and policy levels in order to reduce the risk of overweight and obesity in rural communities and create healthier rural food environments.