This article is published as part of a collaborative effort by students in the School of Journalism and Strategic Communication at Ball State University and the Ball State Daily News. Produced in a classroom setting under faculty guidance, the initiative aims to provide hands-on experience while informing the public through responsible, student-driven journalism.
Clad on the side of North Walnut Street in Muncie is a worn shopping strip showing its age just as the cracked avenue it lies on. A pair of neighboring store signs hang on its green metallic roof, but just one of them glows upon dusk’s daily arrival. The complex is home to the vacant shell of a former Marsh Supermarket location and to a currently operating Family Dollar that, like other dollar-store chains, has exploited the closures of fully fledged grocery outlets for their gain.
The shopping center in the heart of East Central Indiana’s largest city stands as a striking symbol of a dire trend in the region: the substitution of low-cost value stores that peddle primarily low-quality food products in the place of grocers that offer fresh goods.
Food accessibility has long been a well-documented problem in the area, and swaths of its landscape have been termed “food deserts.” The U.S. Department of Agriculture refers to these food-burdened areas as “low income and low access” regions. At minimum, a census tract qualifies for this distinction if 500 people total or 33% of its population live either half a mile away in urban areas or 10 miles away in rural areas from a supermarket.
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Lacking seamless access to a reliable food source, unsurprisingly, spells trouble for those who reside in food deserts. Christina Doll, an associate professor in Ball State University’s Department of Nutrition and Health Science whose research has primarily centered around community food access, said food insecurity breeds problems that span beyond those that are most evident.
“I was just talking to my students about how if a student is hungry, they can't learn,” Doll said. “If a child can't learn, and they're sitting in the classroom having difficulty paying attention, then that student isn't present.”
The increasing prevalence of food deserts in East Central Indiana is, in part, due to Marsh Supermarkets’ closure of its empire—which included more than 100 stores at its height—beginning in 2017. Marsh’s demise, however, is not the sole contributor to the emergence of food deserts in the region: the scene on North Walnut Street in Muncie is a sign of another (and perhaps more severe) factor.
Statista reported 38,435 dollar stores exist in the United States as of 2024, and according to Institute for Local Self-Reliance, an advocacy group aiming to build community stability, that number stood at around 20,000 in 2011. This trend has been seen across East Central Indiana, from its urban streets to its rural farmland. Ninety-two locations of the three preeminent national dollar store chains — Dollar General, Dollar Tree and Family Dollar — are open for business in the region.
Dr. Jeff Bird, the president of Ball Memorial Hospital and IU Health’s East Central Region, is a lifelong Muncie resident, and he has perceived a drastic shift in his hometown’s food environment—all stemming from the influx of low-cost outlets.
“I remember vividly when the first Village Pantry opened, and that was probably somewhere in the mid-to-late 60s,” Bird said. “Now, you can't walk two blocks even in the most impoverished areas of Muncie, and there's not a convenience store that sells cigarettes and big gulps. That's certainly not helped us.”
These stores have strategically thrust themselves in a region where food accessibility is dwindling, making them the only food option for many residents because of their proximity and cost. Not only do they affirm their position on the basis of convenience, but they also drive out smaller, local grocers, according to Michael Totty’s 2023 report published in the UCLA Anderson Review.
The cramped aisles in dollar stores are not stocked with fresh produce and meat like a full-service grocery store; rather, they are flooded with snack items, frozen meals and hosts of other unhealthy foods.
“Retail and convenience environments provide food, and it's cheap, but it's not good food,” Doll said. “Obviously, there are a number of outcomes that are just associated with poor eating.”
Doll underscored among the greatest strains on East Central Indiana’s prosperity: its health. According to County Health Ratings and Roadmaps, a program associated with the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, eight of the nine counties in the region lag behind the state average mark in health outcomes — a rating established by assessing a range of factors, such as low-birth-weight percentage and total of premature deaths. The same data set revealed that the average adult-obesity rate among East Central Indiana counties hovers above 39 percent.
“We’re really poor,” Bird said. “Indiana is one of the least healthy states. In my old three counties — Delaware, Blackford and Jay — we were three of the unhealthiest counties in one of the unhealthiest states.”
Not only have dollar stores created an infrastructure for gaining access to unhealthy foods that adversely impact public health, but as Ball State University philosophy and health humanities professor Kevin Harrelson argues, they also diminish community identity. He leans on his childhood experience in Philadelphia as justification for his position.
“The neighborhood was bounded with a shopping center and a grocery store, and somehow that gave an identity,” Harrelson said. “It gave a boundary right from the grocery. It contains a community in a certain way. Whereas, if what you have is Family Dollar, it makes you feel distant.”
Doll also acknowledged the psychological toll left on communities stripped of a neighborhood store.
“There's a part of it that is empowerment, and seeing not only your community joined together for that purpose, but people from outside of your community saying we care enough to help you put something together,” she said.
To solve East Central Indiana’s diet-related problems would be to free a community from the grip of a system whose power is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few dollar store giants. Bird predicts cultivating a healthier future for the region’s residents will be a multi-generational effort, but he is hopeful in the promise of a better tomorrow because of the work of local nonprofit groups, such as two organizations whose boards he sits on: the Ball Brothers Foundation and Second Harvest Food Bank.
“I'm a firm believer that you have to get into the community to make an impact,” Bird said. “There's really three places where that can happen: our community centers, and they're already doing a pretty good job of that; our public schools, and they're doing a better job of that; and our places of worship.”
IU Health operates Ball Memorial and Jay County hospitals and a network of physicians offices, pharmacies and rehab facilities across East Central Indiana, and because of its reach, Bird believes his company bears an obligation to lead the charge against the food access and health education crises.
“I would say we are the leader, so several years ago, we put together something called the Healthy Community Alliance, and we got all the big partners in town. We've got a director that's devoted to that work—that work takes place in Delaware, Blackford and Jay counties. We're also doing a little bit of Grant and a little bit of Randolph,” he said.
The Healthy Community Alliance is a public-health effort spearheaded by IU Health to curb the prevalence of chronic diseases in East Central Indiana primarily through education programs and funding opportunities. More than 150 organizations—comprising school systems, local governments, churches and more — assist in the community-wide endeavor.
Other communities across the country have rolled out unique solutions in the same push toward providing high quality food, like Bellingham, Washington, whose produce delivery platform drew commendation in a 2024 piece from the Bellingham Herald. Ensuring fewer commercial districts reflect the image of a Family Dollar surviving beside a lifeless grocery store will require empathy and a willingness to listen, according to Doll.
“I see these policies put forward to just increase access, but there's a nuance to it,” she said. “It has to be done with a mindfulness towards what people in that community really need and want. I think improving access is the great response. I think it's important that we think about creative ways to provide food to people, but it has to be with mindfulness toward what people actually want and need.”
Contact the Ball State Daily News via email at editor@bsudailynews.com
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