The United States Department of Agriculture launched the Food Environment Atlas last Wednesday -- a Web-enabled map that gives a county-by-county breakdown of available sources of food, access to food and relevant economic data. The new resource is being touted as a part of Let's Move, First Lady Michelle Obama's campaign to combat childhood obesity.
While the map is designed to provide legislators or policy analysts with statistics that create a greater picture of the "food environment" in a given county, I was just curious about what it says about our hometown eating habits. Here are the stats -- if you feel compelled to check my math or are curious about the atlas.
I compared the numbers for Jackson County and Johnson County based on proximity to grocery stores and different locales for buying food. The food consumption statistics appear to be regional with the same numbers for Jackson and Johnson County -- the average person in either county eats 68 pounds of meat and poultry, 174 pounds of fruits and vegetables, and 315 pounds of prepared foods annually. That gets washed down with 66 gallons of soda. The numbers differ when it comes to where residents are buying their food:
County (48 in Johnson County) engage in direct sales, as do nine
farmer's markets (five in Johnson County). While there might be more
options for local farm goods, Jackson County also has more processed
and fast food available.
