Why is it that a bag of Doritos and an Arizona iced tea is more accessible than a handful of fresh carrots or a bunch of celery? In a city as vibrant and diverse as New York, a global food capital known for its rich culinary traditions, cultural food scenes, and seemingly endless variety of restaurants, this reality is both jarring and telling, and affects several underserved communities each day.
On nearly every corner in Manhattan, you will find a deli, a coffee shop, a gourmet restaurant, or fast food chains serving everything from burgers to sushi. However, if you take a trip just 30 minutes away or more from the bright lights of Times Square, a different reality begins to unfold: one marked not by abundance, but the effects of poverty. According to the Center for American Progress, the official poverty rate in the United States for 2025 is 10.6%, with approximately 35.9 million people living below the poverty line1. However, in New York State, the rate of poverty is at an astounding percentage of 18%, sitting below the national average2. In many predominantly Black communities such as Harlem, the Bronx, Mount Vernon, and parts of Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island, food insecurity is a lived reality. These neighborhoods are what public health experts call food deserts, which are areas where residents have limited access to affordable and fresh nutritious food3. Supermarkets are few and far between, and when they do exist, the selection of fresh produce is often limited, overpriced, or of lower quality.
In contrast, fast food chains like McDonald's, Burger King, Popeyes, and others are not only easily accessible, but they dominate the landscape. Why are these corporations so heavily concentrated in low-income, predominantly Black areas? Why is unhealthy, ultra-processed food more available than clean, affordable, nutritious options?
Upon doing research, I began to realize that this isn’t just a coincidence, and is part of a larger, systemic pattern that is rooted in structural racism, economic disinvestment, and targeted marketing. In 2023, food programs such as Feeding Westchester partnered with Boston Consulting Group to conduct an inaugural “Hunger Relief Systems Analysis” to determine which areas of the county were most affected by food insecurity with up to 15 neighborhoods across Westchester being of focus as they were most in need: nine in Yonkers, three in New Rochelle, two in Mount Vernon, and one in Ossining4.
Fast food corporations have long exploited vulnerable communities by saturating them with cheap, addictive foods that lead to a number of diseases that disproportionately affect black communities, such as obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease, and contribute to long-term health disparities.
Food deserts do not simply emerge in a vacuum, as they are the direct result of deliberate policy choices and economic neglect. According to the executive director of Second Chance Foods in Westchester Magazine, “In Westchester County and beyond, food insecurity often stems from a combination of factors—lack of accessible grocery stores, transportation barriers, the use of metrics so low that they exclude many families in need, and the lack of access to complete, ready-to-eat meals. These challenges reveal that the issue is far more nuanced than just geography5.” Decades of redlining, underfunding, and lack of urban planning have left Black communities with fewer grocery stores, farmers' markets, or community gardens, as zoning has been a prime driver of residential segregation, considering that “density zoning is now the most important mechanism promoting class and racial segregation in the United States6” according to Princeton sociologist Douglas Massey.
So, I sit with this question: Why are fast food restaurants always on every corner of Black neighborhoods, but grocery stores with fresh produce are nowhere in sight? Why, in one of the wealthiest counties on the East coast, is healthy eating a luxury that so many cannot afford? Until we confront the intersection of race, poverty, and food insecurity in New York, it will persist, and the communities most impacted will continue to suffer the consequences.