What is a food swamp and how does it impact your risk for cancer? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Food deserts are places where it’s hard to find nutritious food. Now a new metric called ‘food swamps’ include the presence of fast food and convenience stores in these same places, and they’re associated with an increased risk for cancer. Kimmel Cancer Center director William Nelson at Johns Hopkins explains.

Nelson: What they found is if you had a higher food swamp score that you had a 77% increased chance of getting one of the obesity related cancers. This is going to be I think the public policy footprint of how we address these problems generally, is how do we provide access if we can to healthier foods in these areas where grocery stores have not taken root, the farmers markets haven't taken root but if you're in an area where you say eating fresh fruits and vegetables is helpful to your health are the fresh fruits and vegetables available.   :31

Nelson notes that both obesity and nutrition are increasingly being paid attention to as risk factors for cancer development. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.