Reason Writers Around Town: Katherine Mangu-Ward on 5 Myths About Healthy Eating—And Why Politicians Can't Make You Skinny in The Washington Post

This weekend in The Washington Post, Managing Editor Katherine Mangu-Ward laid out five myths about Americans' poor eating habits, served with a side of skepticism about the effectiveness of political fixes. Myth number one: We need Michelle Obama to help us make the food deserts bloom:

A study published this year in the Archives of Internal Medicine, the first to measure the impact of access to fresh food on diet, followed 5,000 people for over 15 years and found something surprising: Proximity to a grocery store or supermarket doesn't increase consumption of healthy food. That suggests that a lack of convenient leafy greens isn't the problem. Dinner menus are the product of subtle and pervasive food cultures, which can't be tweaked from the East Wing.

Read the whole thing.