Food Deserts and Access to Nutrition

A food desert is generally defined as a geographic area, typically a lower-income neighborhood, where residents have limited physical and economic access to affordable, nutritious food, most often because full-service supermarkets are absent and the nearest reliable food sources are convenience stores, gas stations, or fast-food outlets offering mostly processed, calorie-dense options. The term was coined in the United Kingdom in the early 1990s by a working group associated with the Scottish Office studying urban poverty and diet, and it was later adopted and formally operationalized in the United States by the Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service, whose Food Access Research Atlas defines low-access census tracts using thresholds such as living more than one mile from a supermarket in urban areas, or more than ten miles in rural areas, without reliable access to a vehicle.