From RO: “Your Oct. 10 article about food insecurity reminded me of a video I saw on what I think is the most likely source of this ‘household-level economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food.’ It’s neighborhoods where the grocery store gets robbed so often they are forced to close down. They’ve been named food deserts. I think I originally heard this term from a TED Talk given by someone who lived in such a neighborhood. She said that the nearest grocery store is too far to walk, so residents taxi to the nearest superstore, return with a week’s worth of groceries, and hope they don’t get mugged on the way home carrying several bags of food.”

My Response: I looked up a half-dozen definitions of “food insecurity” before I wrote about it, and none of them mentioned the fear of being mugged while carrying groceries. If that had anything to do with it, the same journalists and activists that are making such a fuss about it now would be arguing for more police presence in those neighborhoods, not more government assistance to provide those “suffering” from food insecurity with more food. And by the way, I’ve twice lived in the kind of neighborhoods we are talking about here. And back then, there were no superstores, just small groceries that were run almost exclusively by Asians. And even though crime was rampant in those neighborhoods, 95% of the violent crime was relegated to young Black men killing young Black men over gang- and drug-related feuds. As a “civilian,” neither I nor anyone else I knew had any fear of walking home from the corner store with a bag of groceries.