By: Sam Liu, & James Butler
November 26, 2025
Map showing Philadelphia neighborhoods most affected by food deserts, including Kensington and North Philadelphia.
Fresh Food can be hard to acquire in neighborhoods with food deserts due to the distance of fresh food markets. School students may rely on fresh food from the likes of culinary clubs or their daily calories from school food, however the calories from school food is not sustainable for a healthy lifestyle with students.
As of 2019 the city of Philadelphia published a report saying that nearly one million are impacted by food deserts/swamps. Around 14% of people in Philadelphia are affected by food deserts, and a north Philly neighborhood, Kensington is seen as a “prime example” of a food desert. William Otto, a teacher at George Washington Carver, High school of E&S, talked about the scarcity of local fresh food sources and on the contrary of how common overly processed food is within the same proximity.
“You’re always going to have a corner store. . . They don't offer a lot of fresh food, almost all of it is processed,” Otto said.
The Philadelphia Magazine talks about how many neighborhoods in the city lack affordable grocery stores around them, forcing the people that live to suffer from oversupply of food high in sugar, salt, and unhealthy fats, causing more than 15 percent of Philadelphians to have insecurity in their food.
"You got to imagine, somebody lives up here on 16th, that's 10 blocks just to get to the store. If you go north of here, I don't know of any grocery stores within a 10‑block radius of here, other than the Fresh Grocer, which is, in my opinion, a pretty subpar grocery," Otto said.
In North Philly, where many residents have to walk to shops, fresh food is often out of reach. But as Philadelphia Magazine notes, "in a neighborhood where people are used to going to corner stores for chips and sandwiches, once [fresh fruit and vegetables] are available, that’s what people will buy."
"I do think that a lot of students come from areas where... there's a huge gap between grocery stores," food service worker at Carver Deja Vincent said. "It's not easy to get anything on foot at all.
Ultra-processed foods now make up nearly 70% of the average American child’s diet, this causes the question of the long-term health risks. Foods like packaged snacks, sodas, frozen pizzas, sweetened cereals and instant soups have high alarming rates of being ultra-processed with saturated fat, salt and sugar jammed into it.
"I think an overall issue is that a lot of kids aren't taught about nutrition," Vincent said. "So a lot of kids come to school, they're presented with healthy options, and they treat it like... oh, I gotta come here, I gotta do this. Then when they go home, they think about it like, "I can relax, I can eat junk food."
The rise of ultra-processed meals sparked after World War II, when they needed to mass-produce shelf-stable, calorie-dense meals for the growing U.S. population.
"Because of time constraints, we really can't do a whole lot of fresh cooking for the capacity of students that we have," Vincent said. "So unfortunately, we do have to do processed, packaged [foods]."
Finding support to local grocers will be able to heal the damage done from ultra processed foods over time.
This is one of 3 vending machines offered to students at G.W Carver HSES as the only alternative to the school lunch, offering only chips. Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2025.
Without support the accessibility of fresh food becomes few and far between, When asked about how young people could raise awareness to food deserts Otto stated, “It’s kind of hard. . . supporting a local grocery store that's actually selling fresh food.”
While this may stand to be difficult a solution to this problem would be starting a community garden, or going out of your way if possible to support local fresh grocers.
Page updated
Report abuse