Want healthy food? In much of Mass., it’s hard to get
It’s not hard to find a McDonald’s in the Mason Square section of Springfield. Liz O’Gilvie has counted 10 within a mile and three-quarters of her home. But the nearest full-service grocery store, with plump apples and curly kale? That’s 2 miles away, and going that distance on public transit requires a two-hour trek on three buses.
O’Gilvie is among the nearly 40 percent of Massachusetts residents who live in places where it’s difficult to get to a supermarket and buy nutritious food. A new analysis done for the Massachusetts Public Health Association found that these areas of limited grocery access — sometimes called “food deserts” — stretch across a surprisingly wide swath of this prosperous state. It encompasses 2.8 million residents, including 700,000 children and 523,000 elderly people.
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