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Grapes of Wrath: Discrimination in the Produce Aisle
Author(s) -
Topolski Richard,
BoydBowman Kimberly A.,
Ferguson Heather
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
analyses of social issues and public policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.479
H-Index - 31
eISSN - 1530-2415
pISSN - 1529-7489
DOI - 10.1111/j.1530-2415.2003.00017.x
Subject(s) - socioeconomic status , likert scale , quality (philosophy) , taste , ranking (information retrieval) , geography , socioeconomics , psychology , environmental health , economics , medicine , computer science , population , developmental psychology , philosophy , epistemology , neuroscience , machine learning
Discrimination against minorities and people of lower social economic status is often hard to prove quantitatively. One way to measure discrimination concretely is to examine the quality of goods available to people of different races and socioeconomic status (SES). We investigated the quality of supermarket produce in neighborhoods of varying socioeconomic status (high, medium, and low SES). Fresh fruit was purchased from 3 different locations of 2 separate supermarket chains in a mid‐sized southern city, for a total of 6 stores for comparison. Participants used 2 methods to record their perceptions of fruit quality in terms of both appearance and taste: a relative ranking of each fruit and a 9‐point Likert scale. Results indicate that supermarkets in the lowest socioeconomic area had the poorest quality fruit and the markets in the highest SES had the best fruit. The results are discussed in terms of their potential implication on health and lifestyle factors for lower SES individuals.