food desert

Definition

A populated region where food, especially healthy food, is difficult to obtain.

Etymology

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 document in 1995 from a policy working group on the Low Income Project Team of the UK's Nutrition Task Force.

Example Sentences

• "For years, major supermarket chains have been criticized for abandoning densely populated, largely black and Latino communities in cities like Detroit, Los Angeles, Memphis and Newark, N.J. — contributing to what many experts call food deserts."
• "More precisely, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) defines a food desert as any census district where at least 20 percent of the inhabitants are below the poverty line and 33 percent live over a mile from the nearest supermarket (or in rural areas, more than 10 miles)."
• "New Orleans' Ninth Ward is what the U.S. Department of Agriculture calls a "food desert." Food deserts are communities with little or no access to healthy food."