food desert

plural food deserts

1. figurativelyA populated region where food, especially healthy food, is difficult to obtain.First known use early 1990s

   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.

   2012 October 5, Judy Valente, “Food Deserts”, in Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, PBS, archived from the original on 10 Sep 2016

   2 more examples

   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.

   2009 May 26, Steven Gray, “Can America's urban food deserts bloom?”, in Time, archived from the original on 28 Jan 2016

   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).

   2011 August 12, “America's ‘food deserts’”, in The Week, archived from the original on 28 May 2016