The Healthy Food Financing Initiative (HFFI) addresses place-based theories of poverty, aiming to develop grocery store chains in low-income communities and improve access to nutritious food. In the early 2000s, the metaphor of food deserts- low income communities that do not have access to grocery stores and nutritious foods- have been connected to health disparities. More than 29 million of US residents are reported to live in neighborhoods that resemble a food desert. The concept of the food desert has been increasingly linked to spatial reasons of poverty. It was understood that the food desert was the main reason why there were nutritional concerns in these neighborhoods. In 2010, President Obama introduced HFFI, which was passed by Congress in 2014 through the Farm Bill.
