Painted Murals Advocate for Nutrition in a Food Desert

According to the US Department of Agriculture, Dinétah, the traditional homeland of the Navajo tribe of Native Americans meaning "among the people" or "among the Navajo” in the Navajo language, is a food desert with only 10 full service supermarkets for 170,000 people scattered over an area larger than West Virginia (27,500 square miles). In the 12 supermarkets on the reservation, over 80% of their inventory was found to have no nutritional value, qualifying as junk food.
Prevalence of Type 2 diabetes on the reservation is 1 in 3 for adults over 45 according to the Indian Health Service. In December 2014, Berkeley, CA became the first city in the U.S. to pass a soda tax measure. However, in November 2014 the Navajo Nation Council signed into law a bill initially known at the Twinkie Death Tax but later changed to the Healthy Diné Act. It goes further than the Berkeley measure in that it the first such law in the U.S. to tax both surgary beverages and snacks, sweets, and baked and fried goods of “minimal to no nutritional value.”
Information obtained from an article titled “Navajos Fight Their Food Desert with Junk Food and Soda Taxes” in a publication called “The Salt,” 2015 and the Diné Policy Institute.