This webpage displays areas that have been classified by the City of Huntsville's GIS Department as Food Deserts or Food Swamps. There is no formal definition for either of these terms. The definitions used for this dataset are explained below.
Definition of Terms
Urban Food Desert - Areas that are more than 1 miles walking distance from a store that sells a large quantity of healthy, non-processed food items.
Rural Food Desert - Areas that are more than 10 miles driving distance from a store that sells a large quantity of healty, non-processed food items.
Food Swamp - 2020 Census Tracts where stores selling unhealthy food options (fast food restaurants and convenience stores) outnumber stores selling healthy, non-processed food items by at least 4 to 1.
Please Note
Food deserts are not an official designation. This data is presented here to inform citizens about the challenges residents in some areas face with access to healthy food options. It is possible that some stores were incorrectly classified as we cannot determine whether each store sells healthy food or not due to the difficult logistics of visiting and evaluating each store.
