Can the distance to the nearest supermarket predict high blood pressure?

A study published earlier this year in the American Journal of Kidney Disease revealed some striking findings that highlight the uphill struggle that we face in improving the health of people in this country.

‍

The study looked at the concept of “food deserts”, and the impact they have on health outcomes. For those unfamiliar with the term, a “food desert” is a neighborhood or community that is far from, and therefore has no real access to, grocery stores where healthy and fresh food can be purchased. 

‍

Relative to all other communities, “food deserts” tend to have smaller populations, and higher rates of abandoned or vacant homes. The people that live there tend to have lower levels of education, lower incomes, and higher unemployment. And unfortunately, it should come as no surprise that “food deserts” have higher concentrations of minority populations.

‍

How does this affect heart health? Well, this recent study looked at almost 778,000 individuals with no prior history of hypertension, diabetes, or chronic kidney disease in the 56 zip codes of the greater Chicagoland region. They then looked at how many of these people developed hypertension, diabetes, or chronic kidney disease over the next 5 years, and then mapped that number to the average distance of their zip code to a supermarket (defined as presence of a variety of fresh fruits/veggies and a minimum of 5 checkout lanes).

‍

Over the next 5 years, 408,608 developed hypertension, 51,380 developed diabetes, and 56,365 developed CKD. Think about that for a second. In a large American city, over 50% of people developed high blood pressure over a 5 year period of time. That is astonishing, and speaks to the mammoth problem that we have in this country. It is also a large part of the reason that cardiovascular disease remains the #1 killer of Americans. And that wasn’t even the main finding of the study.

‍

The main finding was that after adjusting for neighborhood factors, the correlation between average distance to the nearest supermarket and incidence of hypertension, pre-diabetes and CKD was significant. What that means is that people who live in a "food desert" have a much higher risk of developing those chronic diseases. 

‍

Access to healthy, fresh food is crucial to the prevention of chronic disease. We cannot expect to improve the health of our neighbors and our communities if we rely solely on prescribing medications to react to health problems. If we really want to save lives, we need to start with the most fundamental tool: nutrition. And we need to find ways to improve access to healthy nutritious foods for everyone.

‍

The sad, simple fact is that in much of this country, the zip code in which we live is more impactful upon our health than our genetic code.

‍

‍

‍

‍

Garg G, et al. Am J Kidney Dis. 2023 Feb;81(2):168-178

‍