food desert

The story

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.

First known use, by meaning

• from early 1990s A populated region where food, especially healthy food, is difficult to obtain.