Health disparities: Using policies to rethink our strategies for eliminating the impact of food deserts by focusing on unhealthy dietary patterns

For years, we have been interested in understanding the relationship between dietary patterns and diseases, and most recently, we have put efforts toward analyzing the impact of food deserts as they relate to dietary patterns. Unhealthy eating has become an epidemic in low‐income neighborhoods that are considered to be food deserts due to the fact that people are not meeting their recommended daily intake of nutritionally dense foods. Adults should be consuming at least 20 to 35 g of fiber daily, however, many Americans only consume 12 to 17 g of fiber daily at best. Furthermore, as a society, we Americans consume way too much added sugar, saturated fat, and salt. Although there are a number of reasons that unhealthy dietary patterns exist in our society especially in low‐income communities, it is important that we pay particular attention to how food deserts have developed and how they are major contributors to the overall poor health of low‐income Americans. Therefore, the purpose of this is paper is to encourage its audience to rethink how we can implement policies to address the issue of unhealthy dietary patterns by reducing or eliminating food deserts. Specifically, we explore the effect of implementing evidence‐based policies such as nutrition initiatives, corner store initiatives, menu labeling, food assistance programs, and the punitive taxation of sugary beverages and unhealthy foods similar to the punitive taxes placed on tobacco.