In recent years, the American society seems to have become aware of our country’s severe obesity problem and the media has in turn become flooded with health and fitness advice. 

Magazines advertise “5 fat-melting foods” and internet ads flash promotions for nutrition supplements and overpriced supermarkets.

While all of the encouragement towards a healthy lifestyle is overall constructive, the costly products promoted by the media are generally only obtainable to those with money to spare. What does this mean for underprivileged families and individuals?

According to the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, in order to meet the national guidelines for a healthy diet, low-income Americans would have to spend up to 70 percent of their meal budget on produce. That number rises even higher when applied to families above the average household size.

This expectation is not at all feasible and puts impoverished families at a disadvantage when it comes to nutrition and wellness.

The journal also reported that convenience stores tend to dominate the market in rural areas, whereas grocery stores that offer a variety of healthier choices are few and far between.

According to a study done by the University of Utah, place of residence has a great deal to do with the kind of food available to Americans.

The university shared the details of the research with the Huffington Post, stating that the study examined around 80 million randomly selected tweets and their attached hashtags and geotags.

The sample of tweets focused on keywords involving food and categorized them according to the nutrition value of the mentioned fare. This information was compared with regional and census data that pinpointed the tweets’ origins on a map.

This led to the discovery that tweets that included hashtags of junk and fast food most frequently came from rural areas that tended to consist of mainly low-income families.

An article featured in The Atlantic examined data regarding the amount of low-income individuals who were hospitalized for hypoglycemia during the course of each month. The research revealed that they were 27 percent more likely to check into the hospital during the last week of the month, rather than the first.

There is an obvious interconnection here. Hypoglycemia is the issue of dangerously low blood sugar, a condition that is often caused by lack of proper sustenance. Impoverished Americans are going to the hospital at the end of the month because they are running low on funds from the beginning of the month. Basically, people are literally becoming ill due to their inability to afford food.

So what can be done to dissolve this correlation between nutrition patterns and disadvantaged communities?

Tom Farley, co-author of Prescription for a Healthy Nation, believes that government action is needed to change the regional distinction concerning health food availability.

“There are certain things in public policy that we have the ability to influence and those we don’t,” Farley said. “What goes on inside people’s heads is tough to influence but we can influence what happens in stores with subsidies, financial incentives, guidelines and public pressure.”

Lack of adequate food availability is not just an unfair divergence between neighborhoods—it is an issue that dictates the wellbeing of human beings and requires supplementary attention in order to be overcome.