USDA Updates its Food Atlas
USDA Updates its Food Atlas
Alethea Marie Harper
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Wed Jan 19, 2011 @ 06:42PM
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Remember when the USDA's Food Atlas came out last year?
Since that time, they've been hard at work updating the tool. As the Economic Research Service explains on their blog, the Food Atlas "...now pulls together 168 indicators of the food environment (up from the original 90), measuring factors like availability and type of restaurants and food stores, food prices, socioeconomic characteristics, and health outcomes... The updated Atlas provides data on the number and percentage of a county’s households that are low income or that do not own a car, and that also live more than 10 miles from a grocery store. For rural areas, this a more realistic measure of food access than the one-mile measure in the original Atlas."
Of course, most of the data in the Food Atlas is provided at the county level, so you won't find Oakland-specific information here. But you can learn a lot about each Bay Area county, and how local trends compare to the nation as a whole. Here are some examples for you to chew on:
Check out the Food Atlas here!
Since that time, they've been hard at work updating the tool. As the Economic Research Service explains on their blog, the Food Atlas "...now pulls together 168 indicators of the food environment (up from the original 90), measuring factors like availability and type of restaurants and food stores, food prices, socioeconomic characteristics, and health outcomes... The updated Atlas provides data on the number and percentage of a county’s households that are low income or that do not own a car, and that also live more than 10 miles from a grocery store. For rural areas, this a more realistic measure of food access than the one-mile measure in the original Atlas."
Of course, most of the data in the Food Atlas is provided at the county level, so you won't find Oakland-specific information here. But you can learn a lot about each Bay Area county, and how local trends compare to the nation as a whole. Here are some examples for you to chew on:
Percent Change in Number of Farmers' Markets, 2009-2010
Percent Change in Average Monthly Number of SNAP Participants, 2009-2010
Check out the Food Atlas here!
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