There's a part of me that wants to push back against this idea that fresh produce is synonymous with good nutrition.
Frozen produce - which the dollar stores in my area do carry - tends to be more nutritious nowadays. It is also much easier to prepare, and, assuming you have access to a freezer, is less susceptible to spoilage.
And if your food preparation options don't amount to much more than a microwave oven, or you simply don't have the time to do a lot of cooking, the frozen dinners that these types of stores sell might be one of the healthiest meal options you have.
Which isn't to say that food deserts are necessarily a good thing. I used to live in one and it was awful. But I do want to at least consider the possibility that the reason that these stores get a lot of business is that they are better serving the actual needs of their clientele. If that's the case, then perhaps the way forward is not to try and force everyone back to the old stores they probably did have a reason to not be shopping at anymore, so much as to try and figure out new things that suit their needs even better.
It's worth pointing out the difference between frozen produce (which, as you say, is nutritionally sound) and frozen TV dinners, which often contain multiple times the daily recommended intake of sodium and typically have miniscule portions of vegetables.
Sure. But, if you lack the ability to make good use of frozen produce, then that maybe isn't a realistic option, anyway. Then you might be looking at something more like a choice between TV dinner and McDonald's.
I found quiet revelaing that a Dollar store in a pre announced shoot with a TV station couldn't show any more produce than is to be seen in this shot https://youtu.be/GtAvJBAJfnE?t=389
I specifically chose the phrase "make good use of" over the word "cook" because it's an important distinction.
Nobody can make a decent meal exclusively out of frozen vegetables; there just aren't enough macronutrients there. And everyone wants their meals to be appetizing. So it's not just about whether or not you can make frozen vegetables hot, it's about whether or not you can feasibly incorporate them into a nutritionally complete and appetizing meal.
Also, with TV dinners, you can buy just tonight's dinner on the way home from work, heat it up as soon as you get home, and have nothing left over to store. So, even though the food is frozen, there's no need to own a working freezer. With frozen vegetables, unless your meal plans typically involve eating half a pound of Normandy blend in one sitting, not so much.
Also, if you're time poor, you may not have time to actually cook or meal prep. Working multiple low income jobs is not uncommon, and those jobs often tend to have very erratic schedules that you can't plan around. (Usually around limiting your hours below 30, so that the health insurance requirement does not kick in.)
> There's a part of me that wants to push back against this idea that fresh produce is synonymous with good nutrition.
Whether the causality chain is over fresh produce or not. It is established fact that when a dollar store causes the close local grocers the nutrition and health of the local population suffers. On source for that would be Dr. Barry Popkin from University of North Carolina in this interview by CBS Monday morning https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtAvJBAJfnE
Frozen produce - which the dollar stores in my area do carry - tends to be more nutritious nowadays. It is also much easier to prepare, and, assuming you have access to a freezer, is less susceptible to spoilage.
And if your food preparation options don't amount to much more than a microwave oven, or you simply don't have the time to do a lot of cooking, the frozen dinners that these types of stores sell might be one of the healthiest meal options you have.
Which isn't to say that food deserts are necessarily a good thing. I used to live in one and it was awful. But I do want to at least consider the possibility that the reason that these stores get a lot of business is that they are better serving the actual needs of their clientele. If that's the case, then perhaps the way forward is not to try and force everyone back to the old stores they probably did have a reason to not be shopping at anymore, so much as to try and figure out new things that suit their needs even better.