A food desert is an area that has limited access to affordable, fresh, healthy, and nutritious food. Food deserts are commonly paired with food swamps, which lack grocery stores and instead have convenience stores or fast food. In contrast, an area with greater access to grocers or farmers' markets with fresh foods may be called a food oasis. Food deserts are commonly associated with food insecurity and are linked to worsening health outcome including an increased risk of developing chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.
In 2025, the United States Department of Agriculture reported that an estimated 12.8% of the US population were living in low-income and low-access census tracts. Of this number, 22 million people live in "food deserts", which they define as low-income census tracts that are more than from a supermarket in urban or suburban areas and more than from a supermarket in rural areas. However, food deserts are not just a complication that arises because of distance to grocery stores; other structural barriers, such as food accessibility, affordability, transportation struggles, and socio-economic constraints, also play a role in food insecurity.
Food deserts tend to be inhabited by low-income residents with inadequate access to transportation, which makes them less attractive markets for large supermarket chains. These areas lack suppliers of fresh foods, such as meats, fruits, and vegetables. Instead, available foods are likely to be processed and high in sugar and fats, which are known contributors to obesity in the United States. Children that grow up in food deserts are at a greater risk of developing obesity due to the reliance on calorie-dense but nutrient-poor foods. Research has found a great link between childhood obesity rates and the presence of food deserts, specifically in urban areas with limited options for supermarkets.
A related concept is the phenomenon of a food swamp, a recently coined term by researchers who defined it as an area with a disproportionate number of fast food restaurants (and fast food advertising) in comparison to the number of supermarkets in that area. A study of the North Hartford Promise Zone, found that from both an objective measure of how much a given area was a food swamp, as well a subjective self-reports from residents of low-income and ethnically diverse neighborhoods, a higher score on their "food swamp index" was positively associated with increased shopping frequency at unhealthy food places and simultaneously positively associated with perceived access to unhealthy food. Additionally, higher food swamp scores were associated with increased public transit use. Food swamps highlight how historical discriminatory zoning practices and systematic disinvestment in communities of color have manifested in present day conversations surrounding food access, which are exacerbated by the lack of adequate transportation for people reliant on public transit. The single supermarket in a low-income area does not, according to researchers Rose and colleagues, necessitate availability nor does it decrease obesity rates and health risks. Recent studies have found that food swamps may fundamentally contribute to obesity-related health conditions more than food deserts alone, as the high concentration of unhealthy food options impacts dietary behaviors and long-term health risks, including higher mortality from obesity-related cancers.
Research has shown that food deserts disproportionately affect vulnerable populations, including low income communities, BIPOC, and people with chronic diseases like diabetes, who may struggle with food insecurity and poor glycemic control due to the little access to fresh, health food choices.
History By 1967, the term "desert" was ascribed to suburban areas lacking amenities important for community development. A report by Cummins and Macintyre states that a resident of public housing in western Scotland supposedly coined the more specific phrase "food desert" in the early 1990s. The phrase was first officially used in a 1995 document from a policy working group on the Low Income Project Team of the UK's Nutrition Task Force.
Food deserts in America and the UK have been most widely studied due to the Western origins of the concept. Initial research was narrowed to the impact of retail migration from the urban center. More recent studies explored the impact of food deserts in other geographic areas (such as rural and frontier) and among specific populations like minorities and the elderly. The studies addressed the relationships between the quality (access and availability) of retail food environments, the price of food, and obesity. Environmental factors can also contribute to people's eating behaviors. Research conducted with variations in methods draws a more complete perspective of "multilevel influences of the retail food environment on eating behaviors (and risk of obesity)."
As a result, there has been a paradigm shift within the movement with community organizers encouraging members of affected neighborhoods to consider how inadequate food systems correlate with the intersectionality of race and class. The Planting Seeds Just Tour serves as an example, as it visited solution based projects to resist injustices with ecological wisdom and food justice that were run by women of color. The tour also highlighted economically viable alternatives to provide healthy food and created spaces in which community members could participate in conversations regarding sustainability.
Advocates within the Food Justice movement have identified that terms like "Food Desert" undermine how the intersections of race and class largely influences minority communities' inaccessibility to fresh foods. To better describe what is taking place, activists such as Karen Washington have begun to use the term "food apartheid." The activist and community organizer Karen Washington describes the term as "[looking] at the whole food system, along with race, geography, faith, and economics."
Definitions Researchers employ a variety of methods to assess food deserts including directories and census data, focus groups, food store assessments, food use inventories, geographic information system (GIS), interviews, questionnaires and surveys measuring consumers' food access perceptions. Differences in the definition of a food desert vary according to the following: The type of area, urban or rural. Economic barriers and affordability of accessing nutritious foods, including the cost of transportation, price of foods, and incomes of those in the area. The distance to the nearest supermarket or grocery store. number of supermarkets in the given area. type of foods offered, whether it be fresh or prepared. nutritional values of the foods offered.
The multitude of definitions, varying by country, has fueled controversy over the existence of food deserts.
It should also be noted that because it is too costly to survey the types of foods and prices offered in every store, researchers use the availability of supermarkets and large grocery stores, including discount and supercenter stores, as a proxy for the availability of affordable nutritious food.
By country
Types The term "urban food deserts" is traditionally applied to North America and Europe, but in recent years, the term has been extended to Africa as well. It has taken time for researchers to understand Africa's urban food deserts because the conventional understanding of the term must be reevaluated to fit Africa's unconventional supermarkets.
A 2009 study stated that people tend to make food choices based on what is available in their neighborhood. Food deserts often have a high density of fast-food restaurants and corner stores that offer prepared and processed foods. A 2018 Tulane University study stated that there are three categories for food deserts: ability-related, assets-related, and attitude-related. Ability-related food deserts are "anything that physically prevents access to food which a consumer otherwise has the financial resources to purchase and the mental desire to buy." An asset-related food desert involves the absence of financial assets, which prevents consumption of desirable food that is otherwise available. Attitude-related food deserts are any state of mind that prevents consumers from accessing the foods they can otherwise physically bring into their home and have the necessary assets to procure.
Causes
Food deserts have primarily been studied in Western countries due to limitations around applying the retail access definition to different communities with varying cultures, food sourcing strategies, and environments around the world.
A 2009 USDA study observed that low access to supermarkets in the U.S. is affected by various characteristics of neighborhoods and the geography of a community. The study cited income gaps, segregation by race, socioeconomic status, transport availability and infrastructure, rurality, segregation by income, and percentages of vacant homes in a community as variable factors that determined the degree of communities' access to supermarkets.
Demographic changes and redlining In the United States redlining is seen as a discriminatory pattern that disproportionately impacts low-income African Americans and people of color. Redlining began in the 1930s when the Home Owner Loan Corporation (HOLC) developed a grading system that showed the security levels of neighborhoods through maps, causing racial segregation in neighborhoods, which has continued to impact communities of color. This pattern of racial segregation is associated with present day food deserts where BIPOC often experience a limited access of affordable and nutritious food. Historical redlining is associated with present day food deserts, as formerly redlined neighborhoods lack access to affordable and nutritious food.
Supermarket redlining has been proposed as a cause of lower access to supermarkets that is characteristic of some scholarly definitions of food deserts. The concept describes how large chain supermarkets tend to relocate out of or refrain from opening stores in inner-city areas or impoverished neighborhoods due to perceived urban and economic obstacles, decreasing certain communities' access to supermarkets. With the gentrification of lower-income and lower-resourced areas, one study found that the gentrification of urban areas was still associated with a lack of food access. As such, the lower-resourced residents of these areas struggle to have consistent healthy food access, as grocery stores do not open in these gentrified areas at the same rate they are being gentrified, adding an additional problem to the community while simultaneously not addressing the food insecurity that already exists in lower-resourced urban areas. Businesses' perceived urban obstacles include decreased demand compared to suburban neighborhoods, higher land, wage, and utility costs, and increased crime in urban areas. Economic factors such as supply and demand that businesses take into consideration are affected by a complex web of interconnected factors (e.g. demand for fresh produce is affected by people's socioeconomic status and cultural upbringing).
As several studies have shown the discrepancies in the number of supermarkets in predominately black neighborhoods compared to predominately white neighborhoods, the characteristics of a neighborhood population are suggested to be motivations behind some business' reluctance to open in certain neighborhoods. The decreased availability of supermarkets in certain communities increases the distance people have to travel to get food, further limiting food access for people without access to reliable transportation.
United States federal initiatives