New Orleans neighborhood grocery store, 2007, presumably closed following Hurricane Katrina in 2005
11 August 2025
A food desert is an area with poor access to food, especially nutritious food and fresh fruits and vegetables. Popularly associated with urban areas, food deserts are also a problem in rural regions. The term is a notable one because there is a shift in its meaning, or rather in the social class it refers to. Also, in later years it has been criticized as being inaccurate, with the term food swamp suggested as a replacement.
In early use, food desert did not so much signify a problem associated with poverty but rather one associated with affluence. A food desert was an area devoid of fine dining or “good” food, with more pedestrian options being the only ones available. In the earliest use I have found, the full phrase is good food desert, and it is applied to Scotland, a criticism leveled at that country by the English (as if the English in the 1970s could boast about their culinary options). From the London Times of 30 March 1973:
The final straw was the review of the new RAC Guide, which roundly pronounced Scotland part of the “good food desert.”
We also see a shift in the modifiers, where junk food or fast food are used, not to indicate what the desert lacks but rather what it contains. From Vancouver, British Columbia’s Province of 8 March 1981:
Let us munch at LETTUCEMANIA, 850 Thurlow. It’s a fresh idea in catering and a green oasis in the junk-food desert.
Or this from the Miami Herald of 22 July 1982:
Corn chowder should contain corn. Shrimp salad requires shrimp. And banana cream pie really needs bananas.
Once upon a time none of this would be news. But in these days of processed, artificial and unpronouncable [sic] ingredients, Fancy Pantry, 145 Westward Dr., Miami Springs is an oasis of real flavors in the fast food desert.
We see the unmodified food desert in this sense in the 2 October 1986 issue of London’s The Listener:
In Derbyshire the local-based cheesemakers have also gone and the only true Derby cheese is made in North Yorkshire. Buchinghamshire, which Defoe described as “eminent for the richest land and perhaps the richest graziers in England,” is now symbolised by [the city of] Milton Keynes: “not only the home of the Open University but a food desert. Affluence and convenience go hand-in-hand which means supermarkets on a vast scale, scores of fast-food takeaways, yet hardly a decent butcher or baker to be seen.”
And there is this one that is also cited in the Oxford English Dictionary, although the snipped form contained in that dictionary’s citation is misleading. One would think it relates to an impoverished area, rather than a tourist hub that happens to have bad food. From Melbourne, Australia’s Herald of 9 March 1988:
Such reflections always remind me of a holiday (actually it was our honeymoon, which for those keen on trivia is known as la lune de miel in French) to New Caledonia, surely more of a food desert than anything outside five kilometres from the centre of Melbourne. After eating very expensive rubbish for a week, we tried again at an outpost somewhere north of Noumea, a town not unlike Port Augusta for charm. Truite avec petits pois sounded pretty good to me. A steaming bowl of little peas certainly accompanied the fish, but there was a rub to the green. The peas came from a tin. The peas were the only decent meal we had in ten days on the island.
We see the shift in application to impoverished, inner-city areas in the late 1990s, and this quickly becomes the dominant sense of the phrase. From London’s Financial Times of 13 March 1997:
Some localities have also become “food deserts,” where independent shops and street markets have closed and poorer citizens without cars have difficulty reaching the “cathedrals of choice” on the edges of towns.
And from the Independent of 11 June 1997:
Tessa Jowell learnt a new phrase last week: the “food desert.” Food deserts, the minister of public health was told at a private seminar in London, are those areas of inner cities where cheap, nutritious food is virtually unobtainable. Car-less residents, unable to reach out-of-town supermarkets, depend on the corner shop where prices are high, the products are processed and fresh fruit and vegetables poor or non-existent.
But about a decade later, the term food desert came under criticism for painting an inaccurate picture of the problem. It wasn’t that food was unavailable in such areas, but rather that fresh and nutritious choices were swamped by fast-food restaurants and convenience stores. Hence, the term food swamp was coined as an alternative.
This alternative appears first in academic literature. The earliest use, and perhaps the coinage itself, can be found in a February 2009 conference paper by Donald Rose et al.:
Others have found that fast food restaurants also locate disproportionately in low-income areas. The caloric imbalance that leads to obesity is, of course, an issue about entire diets, not specific foods. But the extensive amount of energy-dense offerings available at these venues may in fact inundate, or swamp out, what relatively few healthy choice foods there are. Thus, we suggest that a more useful metaphor to be used is "food swamps" rather than food deserts.
While the authors of this paper say that the underlying metaphor is being “swamped out,” one cannot help but think the contrast between a desert and a swamp was not also in play.
We see food swamp again the following year in a PhD dissertation by Alison Gustafson of the University of North Carolina:
It is too simplistic to suggest that supercenters create obesity, it is more plausible that in rural and semi-rural communities, who already have high rates of obesity, rural landscapes are conducive to building large expansive type of stores which also may have higher density of fast food restaurants, less areas for recreation and physical activity, and represent a rural type of “food swamp.” This type of rural food swamp has easy access to less healthy food and more difficult access to resources for physical activity and thereby may increase the rates of obesity. Since our results did not find associations between neighborhoods with supermarkets and lower weights or higher consumption of fruits and vegetable servings, as previous studies have it is highly possible that in rural neighborhoods access to cheap energy dense foods outweighs any potential benefit of neighborhoods with supermarkets.
Gustafson cites Rose et al. as being the source for her use of the term.
But also in 2010, we see food swamp moving out of the confines of academia and into general public discourse. From the Michigan Citizen of 7 November 2010:
What is a “food desert?” It suggests an area lacking access to food for miles and miles, filled with unspeakable suffering and few prospects.
[…]
Cheap, low density, highcalorie [sic] “food” is available at every turn, so, if there is food everywhere, you can not portray Detroit as a “desert.”
[…]
As for what this is that we have here, let’s call it a “food swamp,” because there’s something of a problem here. We can agree that it is an [sic] very uncomfortable food environment, at the very least.
California’s Oakland Tribune picks up the term on 31 May 2011:
Depending on your perspective, Castlemont [a neighborhood of Oakland] is a food swamp or a food desert. It's definitely swamped by liquor stores and mini-marts—four on either side of campus, including one advertising itself as “Home of the Mighty Knights.”
The stores are nutrition deserts, offering chips, candy, liquor, and occasionally bananas. The stores that carry what a family dinner looks like—meat, poultry, milk, vegetables, fruit and bread—don't exist.
And a year later the term gets the imprimatur of the paper of record. From the New York Times of 18 April 2012 (17 April in the online edition):
Within a couple of miles of almost any urban neighborhood, “you can get basically any type of food,” said Roland Sturm of the RAND Corporation, lead author of one of the studies. “Maybe we should call it a food swamp rather than a desert.”
Despite the critique of being inaccurate, food desert remains the overwhelming choice for this particular situation, with food swamp lagging far behind.
Sources:
Cooper, Derek. “In Search of Local Variety.” Listener (London), 2 October 1986, 12/2. Gale Primary Sources: The Listener Historical Archive, 1929–1991.
“Dining with Cee Cee.” Province (Vancouver, British Columbia), 8 March 1981, Magazine 6/6. ProQuest Newspapers.
Gustafson, Alison. Food Environment as a Determinant of Weight and Diet Change in Low-Income North Carolina Women. PhD diss. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2010, 89–90. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses.
Jones, Phil. “You Say Tomato…” Michigan Citizen (Highland Park), 7 November 2010, A10. ProQuest Newspapers.
Kolata, Gina. “Studies Question the Pairing of Food Deserts and Obesity.” New York Times, 18 April 2012, A1/5–6. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Laurance, Jeremy. “More Equality—Just What the Doctor Ordered.” Independent (London), 11 June 1997, 20/1. Gale Primary Sources: The Independent Historical Archive.
Maitland, Alison. “Multiples Have Ever-Widening Domain.” Financial Times (London), 13 March 1997, 14/5. Gale Primary Sources: Financial Times Historical Archive.
Motamedi, Beatrice. “Weathering Childhood: Stressors that Jeopardize Teen Health.” Oakland Tribune (California), 31 May 2011. ProQuest: Newspapers.
Oxford English Dictionary Online, 2003, s.v. food desert, n.
Rose, Donald, et al. “Deserts in New Orleans? Illustrations of Urban Food Accesss and Implications for Policy.” University of Michigan National Poverty Center/USDA Economic Research Service Research, “Understanding the Economic Concepts and Characteristics of Food Access,” February 2009, 15–16. CiteSeerX.
Slattery, G. Herald (Melbourne, Australia), 9 March 1988, 8. Nexis Uni.
“The Times Diary.” Times (London), 30 March 1973, 18/6. Gale Primary Sources: The Times Digital Archive.
Weiss, Jeffrey. “Pantry May Not Be Fancy, but People Love the Food.” Miami Herald, 22 July 1982, 17/1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Photo credit: Karen Apricot, 2007. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.