Food deserts are widespread across the U.S.—according to the most recent data from the USDA’s Food Access Research Atlas, some 18.8 million Americans (6.1% of the population) live in these areas where residents have limited access to affordable and nutritious food.
But what does living in a food desert really mean? What do these areas reveal about the experience of people who live there?
To find out, we analyzed nationwide data on food availability, food insecurity, nutrition-related health outcomes, and restaurant landscapes. The results revealed national and state-level trends that presented some intriguing—and, in some cases, surprising—findings about food deserts in America.
But before we dive into our detailed findings and methodology, let’s take a look at some of the key takeaways from our research. (Jump down to see our methodology )
Food Deserts in America – Key Takeaways
- The common belief that food deserts drive poor health outcomes may be overstated—or at least oversimplified, and perhaps not as meaningful as other metrics.
- Retail Food Environment Index (RFEI), a common measure of retail food quality, has almost no correlation with food deserts at the national level.
- Independent restaurants and access to fresh produce emerge as more meaningful indicators of robust food environments.
- In some states, food deserts align with classic signs of poverty and remoteness, while in others, they exist despite a rich food scene or strong infrastructure—suggesting different potential root causes across different regions.
Defining Food Access in America
To understand the forces shaping America’s food deserts, we relied on a blend of federal and nonprofit data, including the USDA’s Food Access Research Atlas, health outcome data from the CDC, and food insecurity statistics from Feeding America. These sources collectively capture the geographic, economic, and behavioral dynamics that influence how—and whether—people can access nutritious food.
Before diving into our findings, it’s worth clarifying three core concepts that appear throughout this analysis:
- Food deserts: While still commonly used in public discourse, “food desert” is something of an outdated term. The USDA now refers more precisely to low-income, low-access census tracts (LILA tracts)—defined as areas where a significant share of residents are low-income and live a significant distance from the nearest grocery store. For this project, we used the USDA’s original criteria: more than 1 mile for urban tracts, and more than 10 miles for rural ones.
- Retail Food Environment Index (RFEI): RFEI is a widely cited measure of the quality of food options in a given area. In this analysis, we calculated it as the ratio of “unhealthy” food vendors (fast food restaurants and convenience stores) to “healthy” vendors (supermarkets and grocery stores). A higher score signals a heavier tilt toward unhealthy options.
- Food insecurity: Unlike geographic indicators like LILA, food insecurity captures household-level hardship: limited or uncertain access to adequate food due to economic constraints. We focused on the broader of the two official categories—low food security—which reflects reduced diet quality or variety, without necessarily indicating a drop in food quantity. This measure offers a more direct window into people’s lived experience of food hardship.
It’s also important to note that the results of this analysis only represent correlations between factors, and do not imply any specific causal relationships.
What National Correlations Can (and Can’t) Tell Us About Food Deserts
America’s food system is complicated, and food deserts don’t exist in a vacuum. To better understand the conditions that most often accompany high levels of food inaccessibility, we looked at how food desert prevalence correlates with other factors—like health outcomes, food insecurity, and local food infrastructure—at the national level.
This produced a few surprises, and offered some much-needed clarity around what food deserts really mean in practice.
Food deserts aren’t a strong predictor of poor health outcomes
Despite the prominence of “food deserts” in policy discussions, the LILA score (which measures how many people live in tracts with limited access to grocery stores) shows little correlation with poor health outcomes. But food insecurity—a measure of whether households consistently have access to enough food—tells a very different story. It’s meaningfully correlated with both diabetes (r = 0.498) and obesity (r = 0.396), suggesting that material deprivation, not geography, is the more meaningful driver. This is consistent with a growing body of evidence that food deserts may not play as significant a role in health as was once thought.
This distinction has big implications: while LILA measures where food is, food insecurity measures whether people can afford it—a much stronger predictor of the role food plays in nutrition, health, and wellness.
RFEI scores don’t mean what we think they do
The Retail Food Environment Index (RFEI) is often used as a shorthand for poor food environments—high RFEI values indicate a higher concentration of fast food and convenience stores relative to healthier grocery options. But RFEI has essentially no correlation with LILA (r = 0.011), which means these two ideas often refer to different places entirely.
While LILA scores highlight geographic isolation, RFEI reflects abundance—specifically, the oversupply of poor-quality food. This helps explain why RFEI scores correlate more strongly with negative outcomes than LILA does. High-RFEI areas may have physical proximity to food, but it’s the wrong kind of food. This aligns with more recent findings that “food swamps”—areas with elevated RFEI—predict poor health outcomes better than food deserts.
Produce availability is one of the most telling indicators
The availability of fresh produce is one of the strongest differentiators between areas with robust food systems and those without. It is negatively correlated with LILA (r = -0.199), and positively correlated with the presence of independent restaurants (r = 0.143), both suggesting it’s a hallmark of more complete food ecosystems.
Interestingly, though, produce availability has almost no relationship to poor health outcomes. That may lend credence to the idea that geographic or infrastructural access alone isn’t enough to predict residents’ health—food culture, affordability, and consumption patterns matter just as much.
Independent restaurants tell a more nuanced story
Independent restaurants—that is, restaurants that are typically run by independent entrepreneurs and that aren’t affiliated with major chains—tend to cluster in places where food insecurity is lower (r = -0.173) and fresh produce is more available (r = 0.143). They are also associated with a lower RFEI score (r = -0.323), indicating a healthier balance of food offerings.
At the same time, they have very little correlation with LILA, meaning their presence doesn’t necessarily indicate how close people live to a grocery store. All of this suggests that independent restaurants may reflect a more vibrant and varied food culture—and that their presence could serve as a proxy for the health and diversity of a local food ecosystem.
Zooming in on Regional Trends
While those were the trends we saw at the national level, there were some compelling regional and state-level findings as well.
A Paradox of Plenty in the Northeast
The Northeast shows some surprising breaks from national patterns. In many states—like New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland—there’s a strong negative correlation between RFEI and food insecurity. That means areas with more unhealthy food options aren’t always the ones where people struggle to eat—likely a reflection of dense urban areas with abundant, if low-quality, food.
At the same time, food insecurity in the Northeast strongly correlates with diabetes, reinforcing national findings that economic hardship, not just geography, drives poor health outcomes. States like Rhode Island, Maine, and Delaware rank especially high on this front.
Finally, the region shows a strong negative correlation between RFEI and independent restaurants. States like Massachusetts and Maryland stand out: where local restaurants are more common, the food environment skews healthier. That suggests small businesses may help counterbalance the dominance of fast food—and that food culture plays a role in shaping access.
Distance Doesn’t Equal Deprivation in the Midwest
In the Midwest and Plains, food desert indicators reveal an interesting divide between geography and hardship.
This region shows a strong negative correlation between LILA and diabetes prevalence, suggesting that areas with more limited grocery access don’t necessarily experience worse health outcomes. A similar negative correlation exists between LILA and produce availability, meaning less geographic access generally does mean less fresh food—but not worse health.
Meanwhile, the correlation between food insecurity and diabetes is basically average here—unlike the stronger ties seen in the Northeast and West. That gap suggests something important: in this region, geographic isolation (LILA) doesn’t always align with economic deprivation (food insecurity). Residents may be far from grocery stores, but not necessarily food-insecure—or unhealthy. The result may reflect stronger local resilience or cost-of-living dynamics that soften the blow of food access limitations.
Access, but not Accessibility in the West
In the West, food access challenges are shaped less by scarcity—and more, perhaps, by affordability and structural barriers.
Most Western states show a strong positive correlation between fresh produce availability and food insecurity—a counterintuitive finding that suggests nutritious food may be nearby, but not accessible to all. California, however, is a clear outlier, with a near-zero correlation, bucking the regional trend.
The region also shows an above-average correlation between food insecurity and diabetes, underscoring the health risks tied to economic hardship rather than geographic isolation. States like Nevada, Montana, and New Mexico top the list.
Finally, many Western states rank above average for the correlation between LILA and food insecurity, meaning that in this region, distance from grocery stores and economic deprivation often go hand in hand. Unlike the Midwest, where LILA doesn’t always translate to food insecurity, the alignment in the West suggests that isolation compounds other structural barriers to access.
Methodology
To produce this analysis, we evaluated national and state-level data across seven interrelated categories to better understand the conditions that define food deserts in America.
We began with the USDA’s classification of low-income, low-access tracts (LILA) to identify areas considered food deserts.1 This measure formed the backbone of our analysis, reflecting geographic and economic barriers to grocery store access. For each state, we calculated the deviation of the population living in LILA tracts compared to the national average.
Next, we pulled data on food insecurity rates and the percentage of households qualifying for food assistance, using data from Feeding America’s Map the Meal Gap project.2 These measures were used to capture household-level hardship and compare it with broader geographic indicators like LILA.
To assess the surrounding food environment, we calculated each state’s Retail Food Environment Index (RFEI)—the ratio of fast food and convenience stores to grocery stores and supermarkets—using data from the CDC’s PLACES data library.3 We also incorporated statistics on the share of independently owned restaurants, using data on the share of independent vs. chain restaurants from Friendly Cities Lab at Georgia Tech.4
We then incorporated produce availability scores, derived from the USDA’s Local Food Directories,5 which tracks the presence of fresh fruit and vegetable outlets in each county. Finally, we included health outcome data—specifically the prevalence of obesity and diabetes—again using data from the CDC’s PLACES data library.3
All scores were normalized around 1.0 to reflect how much higher or lower each state was relative to the national average. We computed correlations both at the national level (weighted by population) and at the state level to identify meaningful regional or state-specific deviations.
Note that this analysis relies on available data, and as such may be subject to limitations such as lag effects in health data, skewed results for states with relatively few counties, or uneven reporting between urban and rural areas. Also, it’s important to reiterate that correlation does not imply causation with regard to these findings.
This analysis offers a nuanced picture of food deserts in America. While national trends provide a useful overview into the concept and implications of food deserts in general, perhaps more telling insights come from regional divergence. Ultimately, our findings suggest that the reality of food deserts is far more complex than a simple lack of grocery stores—and that meaningful solutions would require an equally layered understanding of food access, affordability, and community context.
Sources
(1) U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food Access Research Atlas
(2) Feeding America, Map the Meal Gap
(3) U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, PLACES Data Portal
(4) Georgia Tech Friendly Cities Lab, Restaurant Chainness
(5)United States Department of Agriculture, Local Food Directories
