In the Shopping Cart of a Food Stamp Household: Lots of Soda

[Berlin Vet]

68. Food Mirage

Saw an interesting article in the Jan/Feb issue of Mother Jones entitled "Lost in the Supermarket" that mentioned the Food Mirage. A Food Mirage is when some hip specialty food store or a Whole Foods/New Seasons market opens up in gentrified neighborhood. So the people that lived in the area before it got gentrified can't afford to shop in these new shops and have to go further out to find cheaper groceries. A couple of years ago Whole Foods opened a store in Detroit and the comments from some of the long time locals were along the lines that it was very nice but too pricey for then.
As to SNAP being used to buy soda (we called it Pop in Michigan), just look at a shopping cart for the average shopper in a Wal-mart. The vast majority of the cart contains soda, frozen, and processed food. You might see some fruit but not much in the way of vegetable (my own observations). Education is the only way to fix that.