Food deserts exist across the United States in both urban and rural areas, concentrated in low-income neighborhoods where residents live far from a supermarket or large grocery store. They are not limited to one region. You can find them in inner-city Chicago, rural South Texas, the Great Plains, Appalachia, tribal lands, and nearly every state in between. The USDA’s Food Access Research Atlas maps thousands of census tracts that qualify, and the pattern is consistent: poverty and distance from grocery stores overlap in predictable ways shaped by race, geography, and economics.
How Food Deserts Are Defined
The USDA classifies a census tract as a food desert when it meets two conditions: low income and low access to food retailers. A tract qualifies as low income if its poverty rate is 20% or higher, or if its median family income falls at or below 80% of the statewide or metro-area median. Low access means that at least 500 people, or at least 33% of the population, live far from the nearest supermarket, supercenter, or large grocery store.
The distance thresholds differ by setting. In urban areas, the standard cutoff is 1 mile. In rural areas, it jumps to 10 miles. The USDA also tracks a tighter urban measure of half a mile and a wider rural measure of 20 miles. A separate vehicle-access measure flags tracts where at least 100 households are more than half a mile from a supermarket and have no car. These layered definitions reflect the reality that getting to a grocery store depends on more than just distance.
Urban Food Deserts
In cities, food deserts tend to cluster in historically disinvested neighborhoods with high poverty rates and large Black or Latino populations. Chicago is one of the most documented examples. Many of the city’s food deserts sit on its south and west sides in predominantly African American communities. Black residents make up about 33% of Chicago’s population but account for nearly 80% of the people living in a food desert there.
Englewood, a neighborhood on Chicago’s south side, went over a decade without a large chain supermarket. About 96% of Englewood’s residents are African American, and 49% live below the federal poverty line. North Lawndale, also on the west side, has similar demographics: 95% African American, 47% in poverty. Both neighborhoods were classified as food deserts, with residents relying on small corner stores and fast food for most of their groceries.
Texas offers another window into urban food deserts. In Harris County (Houston), 22% of census tracts are food deserts, and the county’s obesity rate is 37.8%. In Dallas County, food desert concentration lines up with an obesity rate of 37.5%. These are not coincidences. A geospatial analysis found that people living in Texas food deserts were 1.7 times more likely to be obese than those with adequate food access.
Rural Food Deserts
Rural areas are actually more likely than urban areas to qualify as food deserts, though the dynamics look different. Instead of a corner store replacing a supermarket, residents may simply face enormous distances. A family in rural West Texas or the Great Plains might need to drive 20 or 30 miles to reach a full-service grocery store, and if they lack reliable transportation, that distance becomes a wall.
In rural Zavala County, Texas, 45% of census tracts have no adequate food access, and obesity rates reach 42.5%. Hidalgo County in South Texas, where 30% of tracts are classified as food deserts, has obesity rates of 41.2%. The Texas Panhandle and the Rio Grande Valley consistently show up as hot spots. Similar patterns appear in parts of Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta, tribal reservations in the Northern Plains and Southwest, and remote communities across Alaska.
Rural food insecurity hits children especially hard. Rural children experience food insecurity at higher rates than urban children (39.6% versus 31.1%), including moderate to severe food insecurity (5.7% versus 4.9%).
Race, Income, and Grocery Access
Food deserts do not appear randomly. They follow lines drawn by decades of housing policy, lending discrimination, and disinvestment. A longitudinal analysis of food environments found that census tracts with higher proportions of white residents tend to have healthier food environments, meaning a better ratio of supermarkets to fast food outlets and convenience stores. Tracts with higher proportions of Asian American residents showed the opposite pattern, with less healthy food access and fewer competing retailers, particularly in metro areas.
Neighborhoods with higher social vulnerability scores, a composite measure that includes minority status, language barriers, and socioeconomic disadvantage, were associated with both worse food environments and more concentrated retail markets. Concentrated retail means fewer stores competing, which often translates to higher prices and less variety. The relationship between poverty and food access is not just about whether a store exists nearby. It is about whether that store sells affordable fresh produce or mostly processed, shelf-stable products.
Food Swamps Add a Layer
Some researchers argue that the concept of food deserts misses half the problem. A “food swamp” describes an area where fast food restaurants, convenience stores, and gas stations selling junk food vastly outnumber supermarkets and grocery stores. The Retail Food Environment Index captures this by comparing the number of unhealthy food outlets (fast food, convenience stores) to healthy ones (supermarkets, grocery stores, farmers’ markets) in a given area.
One national analysis found that food swamps actually predict obesity rates better than food deserts do. The distinction matters because opening a single supermarket in a neighborhood does not automatically change eating patterns if that store is surrounded by dozens of fast food outlets. Many food deserts are simultaneously food swamps, meaning residents face both a lack of healthy options and an overabundance of unhealthy ones.
Food Deserts Beyond the U.S.
The food desert concept is not uniquely American. Canada uses similar criteria, defining a food desert as a distribution area where residences are, on average, more than 1 kilometer from a food store in urban areas and more than 16 kilometers in rural areas, combined with very high material deprivation. The province of Québec maintains a formal index tracking food desert locations and accessibility to grocery stores, supermarkets, and public markets.
The UK, where the term “food desert” was originally coined in the early 1990s, has documented low-access areas in post-industrial cities like Glasgow, Liverpool, and parts of East London. The patterns mirror the American experience: low income, poor transportation infrastructure, and a retail landscape tilted toward convenience stores and takeaway shops rather than full-service grocers.
What Has Helped
Interventions range from building new supermarkets to running mobile produce markets. In Chicago, the Healthy Food Financing Initiative funded a new supermarket in Englewood in 2015 after the neighborhood had gone years without one. Programs like these aim to change the retail landscape directly, though research on their long-term dietary impact is still mixed.
Mobile produce markets have shown clearer short-term results for specific populations. A program in Rhode Island serving low-income seniors found that three-quarters of customers using SNAP benefits (food stamps) reported their benefits lasted longer after shopping at the mobile markets. Over 83% said they were able to buy more fruits and vegetables, and 80% said they ate more as a result. After adjusting for demographics, SNAP customers who used the mobile markets were about three times more likely to report increased fruit and vegetable consumption compared to non-SNAP shoppers.
These programs work in part because they reduce the distance and transportation barriers that define food deserts in the first place. A bus-accessible mobile market parked in a neighborhood parking lot removes the need for a car, a long trip, and the time cost that makes cooking from scratch feel impossible after a long workday. The problem of food deserts is ultimately a problem of access, and the most effective solutions bring food closer to the people who need it.