14 States have Greater than 15% of their Population Living in Food Deserts
data visualization by Corey Jones (@CoreyJ34) / slow reveal by Jenna Laib (@JennaLaib)
(Slide deck includes notes and questions to elicit discourse)
Updated 1/4/23: Desmos version of this Slow Reveal Graph (by Austin Frank)
Type of Graph: bar graphs (side by side)

Source: Jones, Corey. “Finding Oases in Food Deserts” via Tableau
Paired Texts:
Linked Instructional Activities
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsIn one of my classes today, we talked through this #SlowRevealGraph from @jennalaib‘s site: https://t.co/b9iZK7dwEg
— Brendan W. Sullivan (@professorbrenda) September 2, 2020
Brendan W. Sullivan (@professorbrenda) shared how he shaped the mathematical story about optimization using Voronoi Diagrams with the following activities:
Launch: Food Desert slow reveal graph
Deep Dive: Voroni Diagrams and Food Deserts (on Desmos) by Joel Benzaire (@joelbenzaire)
Synthesis & Consolidation: “How Geometry, Data and Neighbors Predict Your Favorite Movies” by Patrick Honner (@MrHonner)
Paired Texts:
Food Empowerment Project. “Food Deserts.”
*Food Empowerment Project (F.E.P.) recognizes the problem with the term food desert, defined by the USDA as mostly being about proximity to food providers, rather than considering other factors such as racism, cost of living, people being time poor and cash poor, cultural appropriateness of available foods, the ability of people to grow their owns foods, etc. F.E.P. considers terms like food apartheid and food oppression to be more accurate, but since food desert is the term that is most commonly used, we have kept it as our title.
Do Something dot Org. “11 Facts about Food Deserts.”
Brooks, Kelly. “Research Shows Food Deserts More Abundant in Minority Neighborhoods.” John Hopkins Magazine, Spring 2014.Weik, Taylor. “For Asian Americans, food deserts encompass both income and culture: How Asian American farmers are helping low-income and elderly AAPI access fresh food and culturally specific ingredients during the pandemic.” NBC News, published July 30, 2020.
Searching for +”food desert” +”[your city/state/country]” will likely yield some interesting articles.
Potential Math Content: bar graphs, double bar graphs, percentages, estimating values, mathematical argumentation, units and labels
Potential Content Connections: health, race, social justice, economics