Food Deserts – Washington, D.C.

Planting fresh produce in D.C.’s ‘food deserts’, By Tim Carman, June 19, 2012, Washington Post: “To reach Jimmy Singleton’s “corner store” at the Marbury Plaza Apartments in Ward 7, residents must take the elevator down to the basement and navigate a series of barren, unmarked hallways until they find a nondescript doorway that leads to Marbury Market. For the hundreds of residents here, this is their nearest grocery store. The co-owner learned the dangers of trying to survive on the market’s junk food-heavy stock — chips, sodas, candy bars, sticky buns and the like. Not long after he bought the store in 2005, Singleton turned it into his primary feeding trough. “In a year’s time, I had gained about 75 pounds,” he says. “I got so big, customers started talking about me.” He decided he needed to silence them; he made a New Year’s resolution to lose the pounds — by not eating at his market. . .”