Food deserts and fresh food access aren’t the problem. Poverty, not obesity, makes people sick.

Food deserts and fresh food access aren’t the problem. Poverty, not obesity, makes people sick.: A
dozen recently and currently incarcerated women gathered in a classroom across the street from their San Francisco jail and considered a bulb of fennel. Crowded around a few small tables, the students peppered their teacher, Vera Pittman, with questions.


“Is that a vegetable?”


“Do we have to eat the hair?”








“It’s fronds, not hair,” said Pittman, walking the fennel to each table so everyone could inhale its licorice-like smell.