Food Deserts

A food desert is a community where healthy food is hard to find. It’s not as much about hunger as it is about access. Many people living in food deserts can afford to shop, they just can’t find a place to shop. Food deserts exist in rural as well as urban settings. It’s hard to say how many food deserts there are in North Carolina because the definition is derived from statistics on income levels, availability of transportation as well as scarcity of grocery stores. Joining host Frank Stasio to discuss the food desert phenomenon are Wendy Noel, the manager of TROSA Grocery in Durham, and Joshua Stack, director of communications for MANNA Foodbank, a Western North Carolina nonprofit that collects, stores and distributes food.