Memphis to Poor People- Eat Shit and Die

I recently saw a TV show with Michael Pollan being interviewed. He's written two books about food, agribusiness, and poverty. The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History Of Four Meals, In Defense Of Food: An Eater's Manifesto The interview has been written about on liberal blogs as well. Pollan talked about trends around the country, particularly what poor people ate and the related health issues such as Type 2 Diabetes, Stroke, Heart Disease, and Obesity. I figured I'd see how Memphis looked in relation to these trends. As you can guess, we didn't so good.
In the first map above, I mapped major chain grocery stores (Kroger, Schnucks, Piggly Wiggly, Super Target, and Super Wal-Marts), Save-A-Lot (since they have grocery stores in lower income areas), Easy Way Produce Stores, and Liquor Stores (I realize these double as financial institutions too. That's how fucked up it is here.). The data I had was at zip code level, so there is some variations with in the zip codes themselves, but you get the idea what it is generally like. I'm going to focus on three poor zip codes (38107, 38108, and 38106) and one pretty wealthy zip code (38018).
38107 is the New Chicago area. It had 21,304 people in 2003. I don't think there is that many now. It has 7 fucking liquor stores, no grocery stores, no Easy Ways, no Save-A-Lots.
38108 is North Memphis (Hollywood/Springdale and Douglass Crump Bungalow). It had 21,787 people, 3 liquor stores, and none of those other food stores.
38106 is South Memphis (area north of the 240/55 junction). It had 32,546 people, 8 liquor stores, and not much else.
38018 is south Cordova along Germantown Parkway. It had 26,709 people, 2 liquor stores, and 4 grocery stores.
Here are the ratios of people to liquor stores in each of these zip codes
38107- 3,043:1
38108- 7,262:1
38106- 4,086:1
38018- 13,354:1

Since only 38018 has any grocery stores, the ratio of people to grocery stores is 6,677:1
The next map is the number of families/people receiving food stamps in 2007. Here is the break down for each of the target zip codes. (Note data for some zip codes was not available.)
38107- 3,067
38108- 3,308
38106- 5,345
38018- 441
So you have a lot of people on government food assistance without any place to get decent food, like fresh fruits and vegetables.
Here is a map of Median Household Income of the zip codes. It's pretty low if you have the misfortune to live in one of those zip codes with lots of liquor stores and no grocery stores.
38107- $25,018
38108- $25,006
38106- $23,066
38018- $79,440
I don't have the data about those outer zip codes because to be completely honest, I don't give two shits about those people. Society works for them.

You can see poor people don't have access to healthier food. The places to buy food in their neighborhoods don't have much of a selection of fresh fruits and vegetables. Most of the food is processed with high levels of sodium and high fructose corn syrup. These areas also have epidemics of Type 2 Diabetes, Stroke, Heart Disease, and Obesity. One of the most interesting statistics Michael Pollan quoted was that it cost $14,000 a year in extra health care costs to treat someone with Type 2 Diabetes. We're a poor city and we can't afford an extra $14,000 for all these people with Type 2 Diabetes. We can't provide minimum regular health care. I say there has been a market failure and it is causing a health care crisis. Local government should step in and regulate food sales/distribution in these poorer areas of the city to protect its citizens.