food desert

food desert, an impoverished area where residents lack access to healthy foods. Food deserts may exist in rural or urban areas and are associated with complex geographic and socioeconomic factors, as well as with poor diet and health disorders such as obesity. Most knowledge of food deserts has come from studies of the United Kingdom and the United States. In fact, the term food desert was introduced in the early 1990s in western Scotland, where it was used to describe the poor access to nutritious foods experienced by residents of a public housing development.

Defining food deserts

Food deserts are likened to physical desert regions because the search for and acquisition of nutritious foods is not easily accomplished in either environment. Indeed, food deserts often are not readily traversed, particularly by people without cars who rely on public transportation. Furthermore, if nutritious foods are available, they often are unaffordable. However, despite numerous investigations, conducted in not only the United Kingdom and the United States but also Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, the criteria that define food deserts and their boundaries and the reasons for their existence are not fully understood.

Socioeconomic factors and food deserts

Despite the uncertainties concerning the origins of food deserts, research has suggested that economic factors, such as supply and demand, as well as urban planning, which serves to connect consumers to food retailers and transportation services, are at play. These factors interact in ways that are complex. For example, while the interaction of supply and demand generally determines which food products are available and the price of those products, consumer demand is heavily influenced by personal preference, which itself is influenced by individual behaviour and socioeconomic factors. Hence, in a low-income area where there exists not only a lack of nutritious foods but also a general lack of education about healthy food choices, residents may unknowingly choose unhealthy foods, thereby maintaining the demand for those food products and perpetuating their availability.

Food deserts and health disparities

The study of food deserts has drawn attention to disparities in food availability, diet, and health that are associated with income level, ethnicity, and local food environment. For example, in several U.S. states, including Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, and North Carolina, wealthy neighbourhoods were found to have more supermarkets than poor neighbourhoods, and the same was true for predominantly white versus predominantly black neighbourhoods. Other studies have revealed that some urban and rural food deserts have local food environments characterized by a relatively high number of convenience stores and few or no supermarkets. While convenience stores sell food products, they generally offer high-calorie foods that are low in vital nutrients at relatively high prices and do not offer the wide selection of healthy foods, such as vegetables, fruits, and whole grains, that can be found in supermarkets. As a result, overweight and obesity, as well as cardiovascular disease, diabetes mellitus, and kidney failure, tend to be more prevalent in areas with a greater number of convenience stores relative to supermarkets.

Improving access to healthy foods

Some countries where food deserts have been determined to exist have introduced measures to improve access to healthy foods. These measures include finding ways to promote the establishment of healthy food retailers in food deserts and to connect consumers to outlets where fresh vegetables and fruits and other healthy foods are available at reasonable cost. The latter may be accomplished through farmers’ markets, exposure to healthy foods in schools, urban garden and agriculture projects, or even online supermarkets that offer healthy foods for order over the Internet and delivery to accessible locations.

One of the first countries to attempt to make inroads into the problem of food deserts was the United Kingdom; however, its Food Poverty (Eradication) Bill of 2001 failed passage. The United States also took steps to improve access to healthy foods, introducing the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008, which was followed by an evaluation of the prevalence of food deserts in the country. In 2010 U.S. Pres. Barack Obama proposed the Healthy Food Financing Initiative (HFFI), which encouraged retailers to bring healthy foods to impoverished urban and rural communities. A large share of subsequent funding for HFFI went to community-development financial institutions for lending to food retailers in food deserts.