Food Deserts: An Interactive Map of the Places in America Farthest From a Supermarket

There are 2.3 million people living in America with no car and without a supermarket within a one-mile radius. People living in these “food deserts” are often obese and unhealthy because they’re stuck eating junk food from the convenience store. Slate has prepared an interactive map of the counties with the most people who live in food deserts as defined above. They’re clustered mostly in Appalachia, the Deep South, and on Indian reservations.

If you think 2.3 million isn’t that large a number, think about how many more people probably qualify as living in food deserts if you expanded the qualifications, like saying anyone with a car but within 10 miles of a supermarket. Even a mile is far to walk, both ways, for food, if you think about it. The number of people whose socio-economic status and living conditions prevents them from access to normal fresh food is probably quite a bit higher.

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